Coral-600

by Roxy Mews

  Quinn’s hands locked against my hip bones and he switched from human movements to those that were distinctly mechanical. His body blurred as he pummeled into me. I didn’t know the pleasure could build more, but the pinch of his fingers against my skin fired off all the receptors in my body and I began to race towards another climax.

  My ocular receptors failed and my eyes rolled back as Quinn came. His cock became the hardest steel before pulsing even larger inside me. He pulled me against him and the final slam milked the orgasm from my clit.

  My body shut down. It wasn’t a complete malfunction, but if it had been, I did not know of a better way to leave this world.

  I rebooted to something much less pleasant than I had shut down experiencing. Quinn slapped my cheek. Had I been a human he might have caused a concussion with how hard he hit.

  “Did I displease you that much that you feel you need to violently assault my face?” I said as I put a hand between my abused skin and his palm.

  Quinn stopped slapping me and pulled me in for a strong hug. I was pleasantly surprised to find that he was still naked. Even though his penis wasn’t hard, it was still very pleasant to feel all of his skin against mine.

  “I thought I killed you.” Quinn hugged tighter as he said those words.

  “So you beat my face?”

  He chuckled against my shoulder. Then he kissed my neck and stood up.

  “I need a drink. Lubricating will have to do. Do you want one?”

  I nodded. I found myself a bit uncomfortable in my nudity for the first time ever. I scared him by my body’s response to sex. I did it wrong. I pulled the bottom edge of the comforter free from the bed frame and covered myself.

  “Coral, what are you doing?” Quinn had taken the lids off of the drinks and from the small greasy bubbles clinging to the rim of the top, I could tell he had shaken it well. “I have never known you to want to cover your body. Now that I finally get to enjoy it, you want to cover it up?”

  “I didn’t mean to do it wrong.” I looked up at his face. His eyes didn’t look angry, but then why would he be?

  I was just a machine.

  Quinn sat down next to me. He eyed the blanket with a raised brow, but he didn’t remove it.

  “I don’t want to play a guessing game. Explain it far more than your CPU finds necessary. That way I am clear as to what you think you did wrong.” Quinn handed me the small bottle.

  I took it and tried to keep myself covered up as much as possible, but my breasts were large and keeping a thick blanket balanced over the tops of them was not easy.

  “I am sorry. I could not control my body’s response to sex, and it made you upset. Please don’t be angry at me for not performing correctly.” Apologizing was something that I always found myself doing when dealing with humans. Miss Matilda told me to apologize a few times and I never really understood why some of those apologies were necessary.

  This time I wanted to tell Quinn I was sorry. I didn’t mean to spoil something so fantastic by doing it wrong. I wondered if Quinn would want to have sex with me again, or if this was going to turn back into the way it was in his bedroom at the palace where he shoved some clothes on me so he wouldn’t have to look at me.

  When his touch came and it was to remove the blanket rather than cover me further, I sat still. Humans were so confusing. Their behavior sometimes went along patterns, but those that I knew most intimately never seemed to follow the logical algorithm I laid out in my database.

  I would have covered myself, but being that he was the one to remove the blanket he must have wanted to see my body. I wanted him to enjoy my skin as much as I enjoyed his.

  “You did nothing wrong. That was your first time ever having sex, right?”

  “Correct.”

  “Then there is no way you could have been aware of your body’s reaction.”

  Quinn drank the rest of his lubricant and tossed the bottle into a waste basket on the other end of the room. I did the same.

  “You’ve got quite an arm,” he said.

  “It is probably constructed very similar to yours. Why do you seem surprised that I could match your throwing distance and accuracy?”

  Quinn pulled me back into his embrace and I let my body warm to his.

  “That’s my Coral.” He nuzzled his nose beneath my hair and kissed a spot on the back of my neck.

  “I wish I could be yours.”

  We both looked around the small cabin and neither of us had an answer for what to do next. If we had, we would have been discussing the plan immediately.

  Quinn went to the fireplace and used the poker to move things around. He got the embers where he wanted them and added another log. Instead of reaching for the bellows he simply inhaled and blew with extreme force onto the tiny flames.

  “So your lungs are mechanics?” I found myself asking, before I could check against my files to see if it was appropriate.

  Quinn didn’t seem upset talking with me about this at the moment. “Just one. I took a bullet to the left lung. Nicked the walls of my heart too. Both were replaced with mechanics when I signed up for the experimental program I did.”

  Quinn stepped back from the fire as it began to sizzle. He reached beneath the bed and from a sealed plastic container he unearthed a small fluffy rug. He laid it in front of the fireplace and watched the flames for a moment before moving it back a foot.

  “Come sit with me, Coral. I always find it easier to talk about things I don’t want to deal with in front of the flames.”

  I scrambled out of bed to join him. If proximity to fire would ease the difficulty of our plans, I was taking advantage of that.

  I sat on one end of the carpet opposite Quinn, but he used the strength in his arms to pull me in. There was no slip lining beneath the rug and it slid like a cushion between us. Quinn lifted me up with one arm and adjusted the fibers flat beneath me.

  I was tucked to his side, and my skin was soaking in the heat from the fire. I never really watched television for more than data collection. I found many of the shows repetitive and boring, but watching a well-stoked fire always held my attention.

  It may have been a programmed fascination to be very aware of fire to prevent damage to my skin, but I didn’t care. I enjoyed watching the little bits of bark catch the heat and pop and crackle beneath the fire that consumed them.

  Watching the wood glow and the air around the embers waver was so beautiful.

  “You seem a bit enthralled by the fire. Are you wearing down, Coral? We can just sit here if it makes you happy.”

  “I like being near a fire and watching it. We should rest but,” I moved my head from his shoulder to his thigh and lay in his lap. One arm stretched around his waist and another holding his muscular thigh felt right. “…but I don’t want to be unconscious right now. The DMA is looking for us and if they do catch us, they will shut me down. I want to cherish every moment until that happens.”

  Quinn’s arm over my back tightened.

  “And the fact that my CPU sent data points means they are probably close to finding us.”

  Quinn pushed me up. “You sent data? That’s not possible with my scramblers.”

  “I am top of the line. Those scramblers wouldn’t stop my network connection. I double checked the connection. It transmitted.” By the horrified look on Quinn’s face, I was doing this wrong too. “If you want to leave me here and retreat to the palace, I am sure the queen will offer protection.”

  He jumped up. His penis and ball sac bounced. It was a bit hypnotic. Between the fire and his penis, his penis was by far the better data point. It spun in a bit of a circle as he waved his hand in front of my face.

  “Hello? Did you seriously send in a report to the men who want to shut you down?”

  “I didn’t do this with malice. I have a program that auto-transmits informa
tion when my system shuts down just to make sure they can correlate the circumstances of my shutdown.” I rubbed my hand along the soft rug beneath me, and watched the fire for a moment more. I wanted all the data I could gather before they found me.

  “But you don’t know for sure? It wasn’t a conscious decision to send?”

  “I don’t have consciousness. All my decisions are based on programs.” I tried to over –explain like Quinn had requested, but he became very agitated.

  “That’s bullshit.”

  “Do you mean cow excrement? Or are we talking about the slang usage of the word? Because the only biological materials I contain…” I stopped speaking, as I did not want to cause Quinn to overheat. He looked like he might melt the metal inside him. Anger makes human body temperature elevate. Quinn’s cheeks were flushed.

  “You…” Quinn sat in front of me. He crossed his legs. I tried to look at his eyes, because it was probably rude to look at his cock. “…you are not just a computer. Not anymore.”

  “You are arguing about a fact that can’t be disputed. How the government defines humanity is one that is born, not created.”

  “Then I’m not human either.”

  “You had a childhood. You grew up. Of course you are human.”

  Quinn started shaking his head. “That’s where my secret really lies. I died on that battlefield.”

  I assessed him. If someone perishes and rises again, in human mythology they were called a zombie. Either that or they began a religion. Quinn didn’t look like a rotten-fleshed being who wanted to consume brain matter, and I doubted he could turn water to wine.

  “You look very much alive to me.”

  “They brought me back to life with mechanics.” His hands came to my face, and his thumbs stroked my cheeks as he spoke. I got the impression it was more for his comfort than mine.

  “Then they put a paper in front of me and said if I wanted to submit to experimental body modification they would do more and let me live.”

  My processor understood the logical path this was going on.

  I pulled his hands from my face and held them in my lap. “They would shut you down if you decided not to sign the papers.”

  “I was scared. I didn’t want to die. So I signed.”

  “It doesn’t make you a bad person, Quinn.” I tried to assure him, but his eyes were wide as he squeezed my hands.

  “It makes me mechanics. I’m not a person anymore.” He shook his hand to keep my vocalization from surfacing. “I was created that day. Quinn died. This mechanical version of me…that’s what was created. Coral, if you aren’t a person, then neither am I. We are coming from different directions, but we are on even ground right now.”

  “You believe that you are more mechanics than the normal human, and that I am more human than the normal mechanical being?”

  He nodded.

  It was logical. Many people had tried to put it in my head that I was more than mechanics, but I never could see past the definition of humanity programmed into my systems. By sharing this part of himself, Quinn let my artificial intelligence re-write that concrete fact. Could a being become human? Did the growth of the body make a human, or could the growth come from experience?

  Could I be becoming human?

  “Quinn…” I worked the problem of the definition around and around, and there was no way to have a complete answer. However I put it, there was room for interpretation.

  “You don’t have to be sure of something to want it. I’m not sure what to call myself. I’m not sure what to call you,” Quinn kissed me. Soft lips massaged mine for just a moment. “I don’t know that definitions matter. They seem so much less important to me now. Every rule or definition falls far short of explaining how I feel with you.”

  “But definitions make this legal, or punishable by termination.”

  “Then let’s just go.” Quinn looked desperate to take back control of the situation. “There has to be somewhere where the definitions don’t matter.” He might not want to be a machine, or know how to deal with being one, but he was putting that all aside for me.

  “You are honorable.”

  “What does that have to do with anything?” Quinn was getting more comfortable with his nudity.

  He jumped up and started to pace. The nervous act was one more he had in the human column. I couldn’t help the fact that my CPU began a tally to see if it could total up the human and non-human traits to come to a conclusion about Quinn’s humanity.

  “You were a soldier. You fought to protect people. You had the chance to protect yourself when they put the mechanics in you. You took it. Your honor remained. You even have the same honor now. You tried to protect me.”

  “What does that matter if they come here and shut you down anyway?”

  I stood as well and dropped Quinn’s shirt over my head. It would have been polite to offer the shirt to Quinn before they arrived, but I wanted to see him naked longer. My biggest regret in that moment was that we didn’t have time to have sex again. It wasn’t the orgasm I wanted. It was the closeness to him. I felt like more than a servant for the first time. He let me in and told me things about how he felt. It wasn’t superficial. It meant something.

  Quinn kept talking, but these words were more for himself than for me. “I can’t let them shut you down. It’s not right. We’re all data. We’re all trying to sort out our own reality.” His voice dropped to an almost inaudible level. “This is what my CO was saying. I never understood before now.”

  Quinn was too distracted by his internal war to hear them approach. They also had silencing systems engaged, but had he been functioning normally he would have noticed the difference in the air.

  When the door crashed down I held up my hands to surrender.

  “It matters, because I wanted you to know that you came here with honor. And I am honored to have spent time with you. You gave me the best gift.” My hands were restrained, but I didn’t fight. Quinn fought, but he listened. I was grateful. “You gave me growth, and let me become more than I ever thought I could be. You gave me love.”

  The ignition baton touched my neck. I felt the electrified rings pierce my skin and touch to the biometal. The brief sting of pain was nothing compared to the anguish I saw in Quinn’s face the moment before the current fried my systems.

  Chapter Eight

  This reboot was strange. Mainly because I remembered everything that led up to it. When a malfunctioning piece of equipment was shut down with a stun baton, it would be wiped of all programming. Did someone save my data and reinstall my backup?

  I heard the hushed voices talking around me. I wasn’t sure if I should attempt to alert them of my consciousness. They might try the stun baton again. Tipping my face up slightly, I tested the injury to the skin at the back of my neck. Still sore, but not actively bleeding.

  “I’m not cutting into her. There are still data processors active. I’m not stripping off live skin when the being I’m cutting into can still receive that data.”

  “It’s a damn robot. We’ve been given orders to evaluate the equipment. How do you propose we do that without accessing the circuitry?”

  “I propose that if you want to slice skin off of anything that isn’t part of a salad, you’re in the wrong damn business because that is torture in my book.”

  The man who I truly hoped would lose the argument snorted. “Are you going to feel bad when I take the decal off my Xbox too?”

  “It’s not the same thing, and you fucking know it. If you can’t see the difference between live tissue and robotics, I hate to think about what is in your bedroom.”

  “Fuck you.”

  “Fuck you.”

  At those words I sat up, and both men turned towards me with eyes wide. Their hands were tangled around each other’s lab coats. “If you want to have sex, do you mind if I watch? I
find sex quite enjoyable, and would be interested in seeing the interaction among two men.”

  The men backed away from each other almost instantly after that. Interesting.

  The smaller of the two men walked towards me with his head moving from side to side and staring intently into my eyes. “You’re the Coral-600, right?”

  “I prefer Coral, but yes, that is my model number.”

  He turned towards the man he had been discussing sex with and shrugged. The larger male reached underneath his lab coat and pulled out another stun baton.

  The smaller man stretched his hands towards the stun baton guy and me, palms up. “That’s not going to be necessary, Anthony. Coral here isn’t going to fight us. Right, Coral?”

  My brow furrowed as I went through my database of human behavior. Paisley had put words in a similar intonation when she had wanted me to agree with her.

  “Of course, sir.”

  His shoulders immediately dropped at my agreement. It was a signal of relief. He might be relieved, but my self-preservation programming kicked into gear. I had to agree not to fight. If they thought I was going to fight, they thought I was dangerous. I knew too well what happened to dangerous machines.

  “Why was I not wiped clean by the baton blast?” I figured I would get my questions answered while I could.

  “Coral, I’m Dr. Randall.” The smaller man sat on a stool and slid towards the exam table I was sitting on without answering my question. “We were told to investigate the mechanical reason for your malfunction transmission. Do you understand what that means?”

  “It means you were to take me apart until you found the problem, and if you didn’t find one, you would be required to scrap me.” I looked towards the man who still stood far behind Dr. Randall. “My guess is you were the one who compared me to a video game console and suggested my skin was equivalent to a sticker.”

  The larger man stared at me for fifteen-and-a-half seconds before he frowned and reholstered the baton. “I’m Dr. Franklin. I appreciate your unique situation, but we are much less repairable than you are, and we would need a lengthy hospital stay if you turn violent.”