“I noticed,” Kailyn muttered. “Why are you naked?”
Isa shrugged. “It’s my own home.”
“But…what if another Elite were to come over and ask you about something?” Kailynn said, looking at Isa skeptically. “I mean, if they even do that.”
“I would hope that Tarah would give me some notice of that,” Isa started. “But otherwise, I wouldn’t be bothered. I’ve had the Elites of the Syndicate join me swimming.”
“Naked?”
“Yes.”
“But what if one of them tried to…you know?”
“I don’t think any of the Elites would ever think about doing something to me against my will,” Isa assured. “And, if the thought ever did cross their minds, they would know better than to come onto me.”
Kailynn groaned and rolled her eyes.
“Do you have any experience with the way men are?”
“I do,” Isa laughed. “But the men that you know and associate with are human,” Isa said, pushing away from the edge of the pool and drifting backward. “Elites are not.”
“I’m starting to understand that…”
“So?” Isa said, raising her eyebrows. “Are you going to join me?”
Kailynn looked over Isa’s naked form distorted in the water and made a face, feeling nervous about her body for the first time in many years.
“No.”
“Come on,” Isa said with a grin. “There’s no reason to be nervous.”
“Well, you say that,” Kailynn sighed. “But…if I looked like you, I wouldn’t be nervous, either.”
“If you looked like me?”
“You know, a flawless body.”
“Kailynn,” Isa said, looking over the younger woman, “you have an incredible body.”
Kailynn pursed her lips.
“…I don’t know how to swim…”
“Then you better get in the shallow end,” Isa laughed, jerking her head to the other side of the pool. She turned away from Kailynn and swam into the shallow end. Kailynn watched the Elite move fluidly, standing in the shallow waters, the water lapping at the slope of her abdomen. Kailynn stared at the curves of the Golden Elite’s body, noting the indent of her soft waist and the swell of her perfect breasts, leading up into soft, but strong, shoulders.
Kailynn walked around the pool as Isa turned to her.
“What?” she asked when Kailynn continued to stare.
“You really are perfect.”
“No,” Isa corrected. “I’m artificial. It’s easy to look a certain way when a computer plans every gene.”
“Like I said, perfect,” Kailynn concluded with a nod, stopping at the edge of the pool.
Isa’s eyes changed slightly at the words, a sad look touching her expression. However, she took a deep breath and smiled, motioning Kailynn into the pool. “Come on. I’ll teach you how to swim.”
Kailynn still hesitated. There were a million different thoughts running through her mind. She knew that, as a Significant, she was supposed to do whatever her client wanted. However, her study of Isa’s body was worrying her slightly. She found the Elite extremely beautiful. She was concerned that her staring, coupled with the fact that they would both be naked and in close proximity, she would make the Elite uncomfortable.
“There is no need to be so nervous,” Isa assured, leaning against the side of the pool near Kailynn’s feet. “Don’t worry about catering to me. If you really don’t want to swim, that’s fine.”
“No, it’s just…” Kailynn trailed off. “I dunno…”
“The decision is yours,” the Elite said, backing away. “I know that as a Significant, you are meant to do as I ask, but I’d rather you swim with me as a friend, and only if you want.”
Kailynn’s eyes met the Golden Elite’s once again. She was unsure what it was that she saw in Isa’s eyes, but there was a type of pain, like loneliness, only deeper. Kailynn had come to notice the excited and nervous looks on the faces of the clients who were so lonely it had become physically painful. But with Isa, the pain looked different.
She decided that learning how to swim would be a way to keep Isa from trying to work during her leave. It was also a way to keep Kailynn from being completely bored.
“Okay.”
Kailynn unzipped her shirt and shrugged it off, placing it on a bench where there were some folded towels next to Isa’s robe. She then shimmied out of her pants and placed them on the bench as well. She decided to strip off her bra and panties before she could think better of it, placing them on top of the pile of her clothes.
She turned around, having to make great effort not to cover herself. She put her toe in the water, pleased to find that it was warm. She walked down the smooth steps until she was next to the Golden Elite. She ducked underwater briefly and came back up, rubbing water from her face.
“First things first,” Isa said. “Don’t panic. If you are having difficulty staying above water, I will pull you up.”
“My life is in your hands,” Kailynn said with a nervous laugh.
Isa started explaining how to tread water. They stayed in the shallow end of the pool and Kailynn tried to tread water, finding the task more difficult than she expected. However, as she started to get the motions down, Isa told her to move further and further into the pool until she could no longer touch the bottom with her toes. Kailynn tried to tread water again, but it took her a while to get the motions strong enough to keep her head above water.
After she had that, Isa kept them in the deep end of the pool and went over to Kailynn, telling her to straighten her legs before placing her hand under Kailynn’s legs and pulling them to the surface, her other hand supporting the Significant’s back. She explained to the younger woman how to keep her body afloat, teaching her the breathing techniques she had been taught. She kept her hands under Kailynn. When she tried to remove them, Kailynn glared at her.
“Don’t let go!”
Isa chuckled and her hands returned, watching Kailynn as she inhaled and tried to kick her legs gently.
Suddenly, Isa’s hands were gone. Kailynn turned quickly to see Isa backing away with a smile. However, the Significant lost focus and her body dipped into the water, effectively scaring her.
“I told you not to let go!” she barked, moving her hand and splashing Isa with water before lunging at her. Isa chuckled and swam further into the deep end of the pool, Kailynn struggling against the water to get close enough to exact her revenge. Isa watched her awkwardly swim closer and splash the Elite once more. Isa laughed and ducked underwater, swimming back to the shallow end, watching Kailynn to be sure that she stayed above water.
“Shit, shit, shit, shit…” Kailynn huffed, trying to follow Isa, realizing she was in the deep end of the pool. Isa resurfaced when Kailynn could touch the bottom of the pool with her toes again and she darted at Isa, splashing her once more.
Isa retaliated and Kailynn lunged at her, grabbing her arm and splashing the Elite directly in the face, being sure her arm was restrained in case of counter-attack.
Instead, Isa grabbed Kailynn’s wrist in turn and pulled her into the deep end once more. Kailynn tried to swim backward, but Isa brought her forward.
Clamoring to figure out how to stay afloat with the bottom of the pool suddenly out of reach, she climbed onto Isa’s back, wrapping her arms around the Elite’s shoulders.
“If I drown, you drown with me!” she declared with a laugh.
Isa laughed and started to swim back to the shallow end.
“You can swim when you’re angry enough,” Isa teased.
“You let go of me!”
“I knew you would stay afloat,” Isa assured, her feet touching the bottom of the pool as her hands released Kailynn’s legs. The Significant unhooked her arms from around Isa’s shoulders and moved further into the shallow end.
“But I was in the deep end.”
“Have you never heard the saying sink or swim?” Isa asked with a devilish smile.
/> “And I was sinking!” Kailynn said, a wide smile on her face, unable to keep from laughing. “If you ever drop me again, I will kick your ass.”
“So it wasn’t bad enough that you never want to get back into the pool?” Isa asked. “Must not have been as traumatic as you had me believing.”
Kailynn stuck out her chin in an over-exaggerated pout. She turned and started to swim toward the deep end of the pool, her arms and legs flailing underwater as she tried to propel herself forward, just to show Isa. The Elite smiled and watched, but was sure to be prepare to swim to the Significant if needed. Kailynn struggled against the water in a way that almost made Isa laugh.
When the younger woman reached the other end of the pool, she latched onto the siding and caught her breath. Swimming was a lot more work than she anticipated.
With unnatural grace, Isa swam to the other side of the pool and stopped next to Kailynn.
“This is…a workout…” Kailynn gasped.
“That’s enough for today,” Isa agreed, pulling herself out of the pool, making it look effortless. Kailynn tried to follow suit, but her arms were shaking from the exertion of her frantic swim across the pool. Isa reached down and helped pull the Significant out of the water.
Chapter Nine
For the following three days, Kailynn was sure that she found Isa and made her go to the pool to teach the Significant how to swim. However, sometimes finding the Elite was a chore. Isa was trying to find ways to override the lock on her NCB chair, but Remus would find out what terminal she was working on and shut that off as well. It was amusing to watch Isa walk around, defeated, not knowing what to do with herself when she was not working.
But that did mean that, when Kailynn was lost in thought, or in the middle of doing something with Tarah, the Elite would appear from nowhere, startling the Significant every time.
Kailynn was no longer concerned about being naked in front of the Elite. The second lesson had helped her get over her self-consciousness. Isa had been focused on teaching Kailynn some swimming techniques, and had been in close proximity to the Significant through the entire lesson. Kailynn was beginning to look forward to the swim lessons every day.
However, the lessons were short and Kailynn was having trouble finding other ways to occupy her time. She would help Tarah as much as the caretaker would allow, but Tarah felt uncomfortable with all the help from the Significant. When Tarah would finally tell Kailynn to go do something else, she would go to the entertainment room next to Isa’s office and watch television, but there was little on that was interesting. There were a lot of television shows that were half-way into a story that Kailynn did not bother to learn. She had thought that television was more interactive, where the person could be in the role of a character during the episode, but she came to learn that Isa did not have that television because she only watched the news, if she watched television at all.
The Elite had laughed when Kailynn said that people probably prefered those experiences because it was a way to escape reality. Kailynn suggested it as a means to help Isa escape the stresses of her day.
“Perhaps,” she had agreed, “but I spend all day at work as a virtual being. I’d like to be in the real world at least some of the time.”
On the sixth day of Kailynn’s stay, she wandered back into the room she had made a note to explore.
The lights came on automatically when she walked in and the packages of papers were illuminated for her to see. She walked in, looking among the different words printed on the ends. She continued down the aisle of colors and shelves, looking over them carefully. She desperately wished she could read, curious about what the words said along the shelves.
When she rounded the corner of the first row of shelves, something else caught her eye immediately. Along the wall was a gallery of paintings. Some were smaller, abstract scenes and others were stunning realistic sceneries. There was a photoset of the city of Anon being built. But scattered among these paintings were four large depictions of naked bodies—two women and two men. The bodies stood out against the solid black backgrounds, their faces not depicted in the paintings. They were all positioned differently, exhibiting a side of the body and the musculature of the frame. One woman’s back was turned, one arm extended above her head as her body twisted and curled forward. The other was leaning forward, one arm wrapped around herself as the other wrapped her neck, her body tilted, her ribs protruding slightly in the position. One of the male portraits was extremely muscular, his back turned, one hand grabbing one foot and pulling it up behind his back, leaning back to create an arch with his spine. The final picture, the one that caught Kailynn’s attention, was a frontal of another man, his frame built, but not too muscular. He was leaning back, his arms extended out of the frame, his abdomen and chest pulled tight by the stretch as his body twisted slightly.
Kailynn was studying the collection of nude paintings when Isa, once again, startled her.
“I was wondering where you ran off to,” the Golden Elite said. Kailynn jumped, trying not to blush at being caught looking at nude artwork.
“You need to stop doing that,” she said with a nervous laugh. “I’m going to get you a bell or something.”
Isa laughed. “I am sorry. I do not mean to keep startling you.” She looked at the paintings behind Kailynn. “What do you think?”
“Huh?”
“Of the artwork,” Isa clarified. “You were studying it intensely when I walked in.”
“Oh, uh,” Kailynn glanced behind her at the two particular images that had captured her attention, “I think they’re, uh…” She turned back to Isa. “Why do you have so many pictures of naked people?”
“I have an intense fascination with the body,” she admitted, stepping closer. “I think it is incredibly beautiful.”
“So you have naked pictures? Wouldn’t that be considered…I dunno…”
“Pornographic?” Isa completed. “No, I don’t think so.” She looked at the male nude directly behind Kailynn, her eyes following the curves in the artwork. “The body is not only about sexual desire. It is incredible to see the design of the human body, the way the male and female bodies differ and the utility of the body in its entirety.”
Kailynn turned to Isa, watching the Elite’s eyes look over the male body.
“Doesn’t it make you curious?” Kailynn asked. “You can’t actually have sex. Seeing these pictures,” Kailynn looked back at the male nude, “it has to make you wonder what you’re missing.”
“Which one of the collection is your favorite?” Isa asked, ignoring the comment. The younger woman hesitated and then nodded to the picture Isa had been admiring.
“Mine as well.”
“His body seems perfect,” Kailynn said.
“I agree.” Isa nodded. “Symmetrical, powerful, the angle really accents the musculature.”
“…I was talking about something else.”
“Oh?” Isa chuckled, looking at Kailynn. “And what would that be?”
“Well…I’m not an expert or anything, but I think he has a nice dick.”
Isa let out a bark of laughter, causing Kailynn to smile.
“Oh, come on, don’t tell me you never looked at it.”
“I have, of course,” she admitted.
“He has no insecurities.”
“You don’t know that,” Isa said. “His face isn’t shown. It’s possible that he only agreed to pose because his identity would not be revealed. He might be extremely self-conscious of his body.”
“He shouldn’t be if he looks like that,” Kailynn said.
“I agree.”
“Be honest, if he came up to you and told you he wanted to have sex, you would do it, wouldn’t you?” Kailynn said, raising her eyebrows suggestively. Isa looked at Kailynn with an unreadable light in her eyes.
“Would you?”
“Hell yeah,” Kailynn said enthusiastically. “Do you know who this is? Because I’d like to see if he is as perfect as th
is picture makes him look.”
“As a matter of fact, I know the artist and I was there for one session of this painting.”
“Then you do know who this is,” Kailynn said. “And you know he’s self-conscious, huh?”
“He is,” Isa chuckled. “And he is as perfect as he looks in this picture.”
“And, not once, did he ask you to sleep with him?”
“No, of course not,” Isa said, shaking her head. “Elites are forbidden from the sexual life.”
“Why is that? I mean, some of the guys I know, if they don’t have sex, they can’t think of anything other than having sex.”
“For humans, that is likely true,” Isa agreed. “However, for Elites, any physical desire, particularly for the males, is beaten out at a young age.”
Kailynn stopped, looking at Isa’s veiled expression.
“Beaten?”
Isa turned to the Significant.
“Yes.”
Kailynn stared at the Golden Elite for several long moments, trying to think of something to say.
“Why?”
“Because Elites are meant to work,” Isa explained coolly. It was clear she was reciting things that she had been told at a young age. “Everything else is a distraction.”
Kailynn could not think of anything to say in response. She slowly turned back to look at the paintings, trying to think of a way to switch the conversation, but the words sat uneasily in her stomach.
“Do the people know that?” she murmured. “That all the Elites are beaten as children?”
“No, I don’t think so,” Isa admitted. “Most Elites also learn to keep quiet. As I’ve told you, Elites rarely even have personality. They don’t question why they’re being beaten. They learn what brings the beatings and learn to avoid it. It’s programming.”
“It sounds horrible.”
“Yes, the Academy certainly can be brutal.”
“Academy?”
“The Elite Academy,” Isa clarified. “After Elites are removed from their incubational tanks, they are sent to the Academy for schooling until graduation at age twenty.” Isa took a deep breath and slowly let it out, turning back to Kailynn. “I don’t mean to drag down the conversation.”
The Significant Page 9