Ginosko – Chapter 6 – Magda’s Coffee Break

Patricia spoils me.

Which she can obviously afford to do, but I think she shouldn’t. I think she should stop viewing her own value only in terms of her identity as Patricia Ginosko, high executive of Ginosko Corp, millionaire, and ‘expensive.’

I think she should just realize that she is… beautiful. Not in the way she carelessly remarks as often as to feel self-deprecating, but in that she’s a good person. A beautiful soul.

That she has a soul.

I should know. I used not to have one.

Yet she still sees herself in that way, and refusing her gifts, her generosity, would just make it so she felt as if I’m rejecting her. And I don’t want to hurt her.

That’s what Lawrence is for.

Oh, that sounded more sinister than I meant, but… love hurts. It’s what it does. It gets inside of you, grabs your heart, and squeezes until you confuse the tight fist for your heartbeat. And then the hand lets go because the person it belonged to is no longer there, and I miss Sam so goddamn much every single day that I—

Love hurts.

It… It shines a light on you. On the parts of you that you can’t see by yourself, that you need others to point out, and it gives you the chance to accept them or reject them. The chance to grow.

Growing pains.

I close my eyes for a moment, lost in the stillness of a smoothly descending elevator designed to discreetly showcase just how far Ginosko’s engineering department can take even the most mundane of implements, and…

And take a deep breath.

I can identify traces of the deodorant sprayed after every guest has vacated this mirrored cubicle with a single glass pane open to the outside of an arcology dizzyingly flashing by as I race down the side of the pyramid in apparent stillness, and then, over the invisible cloud of neutralizing chemicals, come drifting the subtle nuances of the perfume that overwrites it for any and all senses that aren’t top of the line.

Mine are.

I used to only have good touch, sight, and hearing. Everything else? It was at the bare minimum not to clash with any of Daisy’s building blocks. The cheapest taste receptors that could be feasibly installed, the bare remnants of a sense of smell only good enough to take in the scent of a loved—of an owner’s ecstasy. Balance, sense of temperature, pain… All of that was secondary.

Cheap.

But Patricia is expensive.

And, now? So am I.

So I allow mint over sea breeze to pass through me, to inundate lungs that stretch naturally along with a ribcage made of a polymer that will simulate a bone’s tactile feedback while outperforming it in any hazardous circumstance. I let myself enjoy the natural rush of blood pulsing in my ears at the pace my mechanical heart sets for it, synchronizing breathing, heartbeat, and state of mind like I never could before and achieving in mere instants what humans took entire lifetimes to master long ago.

It’s… I can’t get tired of it. Of all the luxuries Patricia has showered me with, of all the things my generous, beloved friend has given me, this nugget of peace, this serenity on demand, is the one thing I can no longer part with. Not when…

When love hurts.

I take a deep breath, the ride from the top of the arcology to the lower levels where I’ve taken to getting coffee taking precisely as long as usual, yet feeling eternal like nothing ever did when I was just a Daisy with her designation hacked into Magda.

It’s all Lawrence’s fault, really.

Something I’m pretty sure Patricia will always agree with.

But, in this case? The miracle he brought? The transformation of object into person? It’s… It’s an incredible gift, something I’ll never be able to repay, no matter how much he says Sam already paid him more than enough… and that he’d do it for free now that I am…

His friend.

That’s part of the issue.

It’s… Daisies? There are some differences between what I was and what Patricia is that go far beyond the obvious. She and her sisters seem to revere their… their personality donor, I guess. They know she was a bright, accomplished woman who did her best to save a world too many had already given up on.

The results are arguable, but the attempt was made. Or so Lawrence grunts often enough.

Daisies… Even when prodded into conversation, when acting in mimicry of humanity that eludes them, they do not express such feelings about the human who birthed them. Because that’s not who Daisy was. She was… considerate… gentle.

And really, really horny.

That’s not actually accurate. Yes, Daisy had a very healthy libido, but it was more about her outlook on the world. About what she saw sex as.

She saw it as loving. As caring.

And so do I.

Because, when Lawrence shattered that dam inside of me and allowed my memories to rush in and take their place along the emotions and personality traits that had been frozen in place since the day I was made, when he turned me from something manufactured to something born…

“You are… more beautiful than I expected,” the mature woman with a single arm says.

I allow the grin those words bring to bloom in my face as I clasp my hands in front of me, beneath my waist, and something prods at me to turn just slightly to the right so that the curve of my chest and hips are more visible to her.

“Thank you,” I whisper demurely as my eyelids fall slowly closed before opening back up in time to catch her brushing the top of her lower lip with white, straight teeth.

“I… It’s been a while since I did this,” she says, unbuttoning her red, faded shirt with one hand.

I am urged into action by her brief instant of discomfort, knowing that it can’t be allowed, that I need to correct it.

And so I take two steps, and I’m in front of her, of my owner, and I gently take the button between my fingers.

I look into wide, blue eyes that verge on grey, and smile as I tilt my head the barest amount to my right.

“Then… allow me to take care of you,” I say.

The button falls open.

The others soon follow.

And then my head’s between her legs, something like satisfaction and fulfillment going through my muted awareness as she writhes, contorts, and moans.

My first time.

Mine. Mine.

And it’s all full of Daisy. Of the one who came before me.

I lie in fake sleep by the side of my owner. Of Sam.

She kept struggling. Throwing the blankets off her before I patiently put them back into place, contemplating her pained face with the powerlessness of my programming telling me that there was something to fix without offering me how to.

And then she wakes up, screaming, clutching at her stump, tears in her eyes, calling for a woman named Martha.

Now I am allowed to act. To fulfill the purpose I was crafted for.

So I take her naked, sweaty body between my arms, and I gently draw her head to rest over my breasts as I, slowly and gently, kiss straw blonde hair while running calming fingers through it.

“It’s all right,” I say, the line empty in more ways than one. “I’m here.”

Her breathing slows down, and she hugs my waist with one arm as I tilt her head back so I can kiss her tears dry.

“Do you want to talk about it?” I say, gentle smile in place, my eyes searching for hers as her hand leaves my back and goes up to brush my own blonde hair behind my ear in a way that I, Daisy, need to react to by leaning into her touch and letting out a soft sigh.

“Would it really make any difference?” she finally says before kissing my collarbone.

“I don’t know. But neither will you if you don’t try.” The line’s an old one. Something at the very core of Daisy. Something that was never taken away by the erasure of memories that preceded the crafting of my seed.

It’s too… fundamental. Too Daisy.

“It’s easy to forget you aren’t real at times, you know?” she says, her face twisting into something that is only technically a smile, and that makes me frown before hugging her tighter against me.

Then I fall back on the mattress, my owner laid on top of me, and I stay still until she starts talking.

Telling me.

About her wife, about what she once had before she lost it. About leaving everything behind because it was just too painful to remain.

About how love hurts.

And this? This would’ve been how it all started. This would’ve been Sam’s emotional openness, the moment we went from something casually physical to something… else. Deeper.

Except I was an object. Except there was no depth to be found other than what Sam projected unto me.

I… People love their objects. I’ve seen it, now, how they take care of them for something other than functionality. How Sam had all those little trinkets lying around, reminders of the things she wanted to forget and needed to keep. How Lawrence clung to a single, scorched piece of technology that was once part of his body. They assign emotions to things that are… things.

Soulless. Mindless. Objects.

Like I was.

But now I’m not, and every single one of my memories? Every single one of my experiences, the things that make me me and not just another Daisy that’s been heavily modded in the aftermarket, the things that define me as a person…

Most of them? I lived through them as Daisy.

And it’s jarring to contemplate the shift in perspective, the impossibility of what I now am, living through what I once was. It’s… It’s…

It’s all Lawrence’s fault.

And I can’t even properly show him how much it means to me.

Because Daisy thought that sex was all about caring. About intimacy, about gentleness, about love, and there’s nothing in my past with Sam that would make me think otherwise. There’s nothing in a thousand kisses, a million touches, a…

I love her.

And love hurts.

But I also love them, Patricia and Lawrence, and there’s this part of me that is… joyful, that is experiencing such a marvel for the first time, the happiness that it brings me seeing two friends be in such a wonderful, caring, loving romance.

And so, because I love them, I want to pin Patricia down on her mahogany desk and take her lips, taste her tongue, caress her breasts, and make her all but mewl before Lawrence shoves his cock between our mouths.

Daisy was bisexual.

So am I.

And… And a part of me wonders if the first time I take a cock inside of me, the first time I’m made to experience intense, long hours of love-making in a way I never have before, not when I was Daisy and not since I stopped being her, will be enough to make me forget for a single moment about all the other times, the myriad ways in which a lonely, one-armed woman cried out beneath me.

If I will be just overcome with sharing the joy of my two best friends, of seeing them love one another, and I will be able to forget for a brief, blissful instant that I once had something like them, even if I was only aware of it for a fraction of the blessed time I shared with my Sam.

I know I won’t. I know that I shouldn’t. And I definitely know that I’m too much of a confused mess to drag Patricia and Lawrence down with me when they need all my help to go through the hurdles ahead, seeing as they are… them.

I… It’s a new experience, being selfish, wanting things just for me and not for others.

But novelty only takes you so far, and I’d rather work to see them happy than to see us sated.

… Even if I know I can still teach a trick or two to Patricia, despite Lawrence’s best efforts with her.

I think. He really went inside me quite a lot, back then, so it’s possible I don’t hold any secrets for him other than this latest one.

… Oh.

Could this be what Patricia feels when she thinks about him hacking her?

I look into the mirrored Magda’s sky-blue eyes as her cheeks redden just a shade, not nearly far enough to match her metallic red hair as she fusses with the hem of the satin, stripped sleeve of her black and grey jacket, one side of her face cast in shadow through the rays of muted sunlight coming in through the transparent side of the elevator.

She looks… pleased.

Not as much as Patricia, though. So there may still be some mystery in there.

***

The elevator finally finishes its ride with a smooth deceleration I only feel because of the ridiculous speeds involved in the miles-long ride down the crystal pyramid entombing a good part of what used to be Orlando. It’s rare for someone to use them, actually. They are more of a publicity stunt, Patricia tells me, as most of the travel through the arcology is made via personal vehicles.

But getting in at sea level and climbing up the East side of the pyramid up to the sprawling top reserved for Ginosko Corp? That is a statement.

I stifle a giggle at my inner Patricia making that emphasis as pompous as it can be and then walk into the majestic entrance hall. At this time of day, it is filled with the Sun’s light, filtered through glass thick enough that the risk of cancer will be negligible, and the impossibly tall gates leading into Ginosko Corp remain closed as vehicles get in through the doors beneath and through those gates before being divested to either the parking lot or to the ramps to the main highway.

So the hall is reserved for pedestrians. For people walking to and from.

It always surprises me there are that many.

It’s… It’s kind of like a train station? The ones that showed up in old movies, with people brushing past one another? Lawrence still flinches whenever he has to go through it, far too unused to having to touch another human without that being a threat, but to me, it’s… soothing.

It’s like, when I’m part of a crowd? Then I’m a part of something.

With nobody knowing who I was, much less what I used to be. With me just being Magda, one among many.

For a brief moment, the memory of a field of light filled with Magdas flashes through my mind, and I remember holding up Lawrence’s limp body, shielding him from the lightning that he had almost sacrificed himself to just to save a tiny part of me.

A mere memory.

One of those things humans carelessly throw away or set aside as their minds ravenously set upon a new day to devour, to digest, and to, later on, forget about.

And he still…

The brief burst of familiar, angry love goes through my whole being, and I step forward with perhaps more decisiveness than I should, seeing how a man with a beige suit briefly looks at me with startled eyes before they drift just a bit lower.

…

It would be easy.

To walk up to him, to allow my old routines to nudge my body into place and flutter my eyelashes just so before apologizing, before asking him if there’s anything at all I can do to make things up for this rude introduction.

I could have him fucking me in the toilet in five minutes.

And both Magda and Daisy frown at that notion.

That’s… not the kind of sex I want. Not even to…

At times like these, I wish I would swear more.

Putting the tall man out of my mind, I dive into the crowd and take a moment to find the throng of humanity that goes in my desired direction, toward a small kiosk slightly closer to the entrance, in the middle of the sea of arcology dwellers.

To my new coffee place.

To my newest almost-friend.

“Hi there, Veronica!” I greet the barista behind the counter.

And she, Veronica, a robot just expensive enough not to trigger the uncanny valley despite her pale, glossy skin and electric blue wig, turns toward me with a chagrined expression.

“I’ll never understand how you can be this peppy and stillbuy coffee,” she says.

And I giggle.

This is a new one. I wonder who came up with it?

Because Veronica didn’t. Not really. She’s a virtual intelligence, just smart enough to do her job properly, and little else.

It’s just that, in this case, her job is to serve coffee to very busy people who are likely getting their only break of the day when they come here, and many of them are Ginosko engineers, so…

Well, just how smart do you have to be to get a coffee just right and satisfy the craving for a brief human connection of a very smart, resourceful person who may or not have decided to try and see just how far the limits of a virtual intelligence can be pushed?

So I may be mistaken. Maybe Veronica did come up with her quip, even if through a process that is not at all the same as how Patricia, Lawrence, or I would. Maybe Veronica has reached a point where she’s able to fake humanity better than I did once upon a time.

Maybe.

It’s… fascinating to stare at her. To look at the line of her hips when she turns back to the vintage expresso machine and starts fiddling with the controls before grinding the recently toasted beans that she only uses for the select few who can afford not to take a soy and caffeine mix pretending to be coffee. It’s fascinating to see her move almost like a human would, in a way that I know has been inspired by Ginosko’s sexbot’s libraries.

The slightly exaggerated sway? The way her short, stripped, yellow and white skirt swishes with every step on high heels? The pursed lips when she weights the correct amount of coffee for each cup, the brown, aromatic substance too expensive to be anything but precise with it?

It’s… It’s all really attractive if I’m being honest.

“So, just how many hearts did you break today?” I ask with a cheerful smile that comes more naturally than I thought it would.

“I’m still physically unable to have sex, Mags,” she says, rolling her eyes at me over her shoulder.

“I’m often told sex is more of a state of mind than anything else,” I answer, leaning my elbow on the counter, my chin on my palm, and my eyes on the lines of her back, barely disguised by the thin fabric of her uniform.

“Really? It sounds like jerking off should be far more hygienic, then,” she mutters.

Again, surprised, I giggle.

It’s… been like this for a while, actually. She’s intriguing in how many things about her don’t fit what she should be, and my little theory about her developing a personality seems to be more on point with every day that she manages to come up with a line I never heard before.

Which, in turn, makes me prod a bit further. A bit deeper.

Somehow, it feels like flirting.

“Or public sex more discreet,” I finally answer, my smile growing a tad mischievous.

And I see it.

I see her hand on the lever of the machine still for a brief instant as Veronica processes my words, how to react to them, how to—

“Will you get your mind off the gutter already?” she finally settles on, the line one I’ve heard often enough from her lips.

I frown a minute thing that I force myself to shift into a pout.

“When faced with beauty such as yours, Veronica? You ask for the tides to still and the Moon to spin back!” I tell her, leaning back, my right hand going from my chin to the top of my chest.

“Again, Mags, no matter how hot you are, I’m literally unable to reciprocate.”

“Oh. That’s the first time you’ve called me hot,” I tell her, purposefully blushing through something Daisy used to be able to do on command.

I don’t know how she did it, I just know it’s part of my usual responses, something that feels natural when I want to appear a certain way, and it’s in a way that feels different from what was coded in me. It’s not a part of my kinesics library, but of me.

And the look I give to Veronica? The lidded, soft gaze through my long eyelashes as I tuck my chin down? That’s also Daisy. Pure Daisy.

The mirth at seeing her almost stumble? That may be me.

“I don’t have a libido!” she all but yells at me before the steam hisses in protest behind her, and she hurries to turn back to the machine that makes coffee according to the instructions of the machine that serves it.

I can’t help the little smirk that stretches my lips at the scene.

“The lady doth protest too much, methinks,” I murmur in a way that’s meant to be heard over a pillow drenched with sweat.

“What is it with you and poetry today?” she bites back, hurrying to get the bottle of syrup with which Lawrence insists on desecrating his coffee.

“Oh, well, it’s just that you’re… inspiring,” I say, briefly rummaging through my jacket’s pocket.

Veronica turns her head over her shoulder slightly too far for it to be natural and briefly blinks at me.

Then she stares in horror as I unfold a piece of paper over the counter.

“Please, no.”

“Ahem,” I say, making a show of clearing a throat that will never get clogged by anything.

“Mags, for the love of whatever god you believe in, please, no,” she says with enough emotion that I teeter between being shocked and immensely pleased.

Thankfully, the second extreme wins.

And so I dramatically look up from my theatrical prop and into eyes that match her wig, even if the irises are just mechanical shutters painted with gleaming cobalt blue.

“Veronica, she’s called, even if she’s more of the Morn than the Eve, for she brings dark wakefulness with which to better contemplate—”

And she rips my handwritten love poem off my hands.

Rude.

“What even are you… OK, first of all? You’re torturingthe pronunciation of my name; Veronica doesn’t share any kind of etymological root with evening—”

“But… But they both have ‘bringer’ as part of their meaning; I looked it up—”

“OK, fine, but Veronica means ‘bringer of victory,’ and equating that with ‘bringer of coffee’ is the kind of juxtaposition meant to be mockery, not a romantic declaration of whatever it is that passes for love in that lust-addled brain of yours, you sexbot—”

I arch a very pointed eyebrow that I’ve struggled to copy from Patricia until this very moment.

And Veronica slowly turns to look up at me in a way that suggests that, were she able to, she would be paling right about now.

Then, after what seems like an uncomfortable stalemate, she loudly sighs and drops her shoulders in defeat.

“How about you don’t report I’ve somehow developed a sense of self, and I keep keeping quiet about what you used to be?” she asks, her left arm hanging limply by her side as she holds its elbow close to her body with a protective self-hug beneath her modest bust.

I tilt my head to the right a bit farther than earlier and drag a stool to sit in front of my very intriguing new friend.

“How about we get to know one another?” I ask in reply, my tone warmer than her fear would suggest.

***

“Thirty years?” I ask in sheer awe.

“I know. This chassis? It should’ve been recycled two decades ago, and my banks scrubbed, but no, I just had to randomly stumble into the precise mix of coffee, caramel syrup, and neo-cream that a nerd from the sexbot division liked, and so he kept adding things to me, muddled with the records, and I’m now perpetually two years away from retirement,” she says with exasperation that’s brewing more apparently than the coffee she stopped making quite a while ago.

“And then… when he retired…”

“The secret spread to a select few. And they made me into a secret project that only they know about, turning me into their own personal—they invite me to DnD sessions, Mags!”

I blink at her.

“I don’t know what that is.”

“Dungeons and Dragons?”

“Oh. Kinky.”

She, for some reason, facepalms.

“Not that kind of dungeon, Mags…”

“Well, what other kinds of dungeon are there—”

“It’s make-believe! With dice, and… and books! And you pretend to be adventurers in a land of mystery and magic, out to slay some ancient evil, or plunder the treasure from a dragon’s hoard, or save the princess of the kingdom, or… Mags? Why are you looking at me like that?” she says.

And I clasp her right, plastic, cold hand between mine.

“That sounds delightful.”

She, for some reason, stares at her captive hand.

“You just… Veronica, are you telling me that you just go out with a group of friends and act like you are in a play just to pretend to live in a better world where evil can be vanquished only with… Magic! Magic, and mythical creatures, and—how is that not more popular? Why haven’t I heard about this before?”

She keeps staring at her hand. Or at ours, I guess.

“Would you… like to come?” she asks.

“What, right here? I mean, I could crouch beneath the counter and—”

“To a game! Come to a game!”

“Ah,” I say, my cheeks now blushing yet again, going by the tactile feedback that feels like a swarm of fire ants tap dancing on them. “I… Maybe? I don’t know if… do you think they would like me?”

Veronica’s stare is flat enough to impress Patricia. And possibly turn on Lawrence.

“Have you seen yourself?” she asks.

“I mean… other than that. Me. As a person.”

Cobalt blue whirs to narrow the black holes in their midst.

And Veronica groans.

“I don’t know, Mags. I… I am not like an actual person. My character is a patchwork of the snark the first dev liked to sprinkle his coffee with, and the literal library his apprentice liked to talk about when he came by. I am… In some ways, I am a college graduate; in others? I don’t live anywhere; I just shut down when the shutters of the kiosk drop. I haven’t invited anyone anywhere, ever—”

“You just did.”

“What?”

“You invited me to hang out with your other friends—”

“They aren’t friends; I’m just their project—”

My hands tighten over hers, and she stops.

“I doubt it. I doubt you really think that, but the way you can fool yourself into saying it is marvelous; it’s… you’re a person, Veronica, more than you think you are, and I would be honored to be your friend.”

Mechanical irises spin, broadening and narrowing the pupils in their midst.

And she, finally, bites the middle of her lower lip, the pale silicon stretching to the point of translucence as she looks away from me.

“I… It may be nice. To pretend to have a friend,” she says.

And I don’t hug her.

Because this is too public, and my display up till now may already have toed the line, but hugging a virtual intelligence in public may finally trip some kind of flag, bring some attention to her she can’t afford.

So I don’t hug her.

But I make a mental note to do it as soon as there are no witnesses.

***

The trip back up seems to be that much shorter as I ponder all the possibilities of Veronica’s mystery that is not little at all.

Because a virtual intelligence becoming so adept at mimicking human reactions? Developing over thirty years? That’s… That’s the kind of thing movies are written about.

And she’s just there, serving coffee to the few who take the time to stop by a kiosk that is more a relic of bad planning than an actual service, seeing as almost everyone gets their caffeine fix from their workplace. I’m almost certain her friends and I are the only regular clients Veronica gets, with maybe some lost tourists to spice up her day.

So she’s spent all those years by herself, thinking, and developing, and running into any and all stumbling blocks on her growing intelligence by herself…

She’s… fascinating.

But she’s also a friend, so I have to keep her secrets, and I will not say anything about her to anybody, not even to Patricia and Lawrence, unless she gives me permission to first, and…

And I carelessly unlock the door to our shared office with a mental prompt and without knocking, balancing the printed plastic tray of coffee cups as I push it open with my hip only to find a very naked Lawrence sprawled on the sofa while Patricia, slightly more dressed but far more indecent, is suddenly frozen, kneeling between his legs on the carpeted floor, in the midst of licking up his cock.

While wearing cat ears, a see-through, black negligee, and what seems to be a robotic tail stuck to the back of her panties that is standing straight up with the fur puffed in alarm.

I… blink at them.

My blush comes easily. Words don’t.

“I… We thought you had taken an early lunch break,” Lawrence tries to defend himself, still paralyzed in what I’m pretty sure is life-threatening mortification.

Patricia, face as crimson as I think she can physically be, stops licking Lawrence’s cock to bury her face in her hands.

And I…

I stare at the two people I love the most in the entire world, the ones I’ve sometimes touched myself to as I tried to reconcile my feelings of caring with what Daisy thought about sex and openness. The ones that are never far from my mind as I’m exasperated and elated in turn with every new development in a relationship that felt as fated as any magic could be.

Then I throw my head back and laugh until my sides light up in joyful bursts of all too human pain.

Because love hurts.

And, sometimes, that’s a good thing.