[IC][Story][Arc 1]Greetings

[Dartz]

We loose ourselves in the rythym of the crowd and the beat of the music, pitching, tuning, shifting ourselves to match, riding that exhilarating crest of electric energy. The crowd feeds on us feeding on then, building the music to an ecstatic climax.

A thrill rolls through my body. I glance at Sylvie.

Her white teeth shine. Her sweet-sheened skin shimmers under the spotlights. Her voice carries on from mine mid-sylabble while my fingers carry the melody on the guitar.

My body plays on.

My mind carries above the crowd, hundreds of eyes gaze enraptured. A thousand bodies, enthralled, existing only for us.

Anri giggles behind me.

Lou takes over from Sylvie.

My body shivers as I soak in the heat of the moment and the steamy atmosphere. Pressure in the room, building to burst. Bodies push against the stage, reaching up. Security pushes back. A riot threatens.

My turn in the round robin once again.

The passion is artificial. The thrill is real. I can't imagine doing anything else with any life I've ever had. To exist for nothing more than being the most important thing in the world to a thousand begging people.

The words are our own.

Yearning for freedom into the thrill of escape and the desperate struggle.

It's not a story that has a good end.

My mind wanders into the girl's memories, looking at myself or my sister as she cradled...

And then...

Here we are.

I...I

The air in the dressing room steams as we cool off. Wet sweat clings to our bodies. The atmosphere hangs around us, charged with pheromones.  We languish in our stage clothes, letting the last of the energy uncoil from our bodies.

“I didn't think it could be so much fun,” Nam breathes, her voice quivering.

“Better than sex?”

Lou takes the words from my mouth

“Oh,”

Sylvie cocked an eyebrow. An invite to participate in an experiment. She glanced at the pair of us.

“No mess to clean out,” Lou smirks. “And I need a little variety.” She shoost me a glare as the one to blame.

“It's dangerous to attract attention,” says the rust-haired sexaroid who goes on stage in skin-tight leotard. Four pairs of unamused eyes stare, the air spicy with hostily. “The wrong kind of attention.”

Lou pursed her lips into a pout. “The one who says we need to stay under cover, is the one who seems to adore the attention.”

I placed my hands on my chest as the most visible difference from my previous humanity. “This is all new to me,”

Anri just smiled. “I cant even imagine what it was like for you to be an ordinary human. Your memories are so strange...”

My eyes glared.

“She couldn't help it, Anri,” Lou cut in. “That's such a nasty thing to say. Humans can't help what they are,”

I couldn't tell if she was doing it on purpose or not. My middle finger gave them both my answer.

Their grin rewards with a flash of simulated endorphins. Just teasing.

My body drops into a wicker chair, weight shifting across my chest. My mind drifts through the eidetic memories I'd been given, wandering through each moment of their lives., along with every millisecond of my own since waking up.

A knock on the door quitens us all. The air stains with tension.

“I'll get it,” says Sylvie. Lou's ready to guard. I'm on my feet. Anri and Nam slip to the back of the room. Again the air turns hostile, ready to meet whatever comes through the door.

The door opens.

“Greetings,”      

I recognise the voice immediately. I recognise the pale skin, the golden uniform, and that always-curious look worn on his face as if the whole of existance served to just puzzle his cybernetic brain.

Lou gasps in shock, stepping back from him “I can't sense you?”

“I am a like you,” he assures.

The tension ripples through the room from the girls.

“A male sexaroid?” Anri asks, her voice barely above a whisper. The prospect thrills her.

Sylvie slips out of the fighting stance she'd adopted. I had to admit, even the idea of an android partner sets my mind tingling.

“An artificial lifeform,” For a moment, he even seems put out by the idea. “My name is Data,”

We stare.

The girls are faced, for the first time, with a humanoid they cannot read and a mind they cannot comprehend. Their unease weighs heavy on the air, pressing down on my body. I'm faced with my next tenant.

The door closes behind him as he surveys all five of us.  Myself, Lou and Sylvie standing between him and Nam and Anri.

“I take it, I am not the only anachronism here.”

“What gave us away?” I ask.

“Your playing. No human is capable of such precise and accurate fingering.”

He is patently unaware of his use of innuendo.

--
________________________________
--m(^0^)m-- Wot, no sig?

[Black Aeronaut]

OOC:
Wait, who is that.... Oh my.... is that... DATA!?

[robkelk]

OOC:
I remember the teaser from earlier this year - I wondered whether you were going to do anything with it. That's a good start.
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012

[Dartz]

My creativity has collapsed. But I still function

---

Our apartment smells of sweat, perfume, cocunut shampoo and cheap dinners. Freed from the public eye, we lounge around in our lingerie. Not the most physically comfortable, but the most mentally comforting.

Sylvie, Lou, Name and I wore almost the same teddy combination – Lou having fishnets rather than the sheer stocking Sylvie and I wore. I preferred darker colours, while Sylvie and Lew wore white.

Nam and Anri wore the same light, frilled camisole – Nam in silver and Anri in pink.

Data wore his starfleet uniform, completely undisturbed by our questioning, or our appearance

“So, does that mean you're not actually capable of sex,”

It's Lou again who asks.

“I am fully functional,” Data assures her, utterly nonplussed. “Programmed with a multiple techniques and a broad variety of pleasuring,”

As the toaster is programmed to make a broad variety of toast.

“But you're not a sexaroid?”

“Sexual pleasure is not my primary function,”

“So what is?” Sylive's eyes seem to zoom in to him. “What type of boomer are you?”

He looked at here “What is a boomer?” It takes his positronic brain a moment to catch up. “I have never heard that term for an artifical lifeform before?”

“We are,” I say, before realising I didn't really know how to explain it myself. “Genom cyberdroid division model Bu-33-S. Year of manufacture, 2029 for year 2030. Serial ID. GMV-SE1736001378878. Intelligent provision of human emotional and physical companionship.”

A small part of me quails at how mechanical my voice had sounded. Encoded in the serial number is a body-type, hair colour, eye colour, skin-tone and personality metrics. Data adds two and two.

“Why would anyone create a sentient lifeform with the sole purpose of proviinge sexual pleasure?”

“Humans get lonely,” answers Nam, “Everyone needs someone,”

“Humans are evil,” answers Lou with a bitter sneer. Knowing her history, neither of us come to the defense of mankind.

“Why?” Data asks simply.

Lou scowls. The air stains with anger. “My personality map was altered to continually resist unwanted partners,” her blue eyes stared at the android in the chair. “Eventually he subdued me and forced himself on me, I was programmed to prefer to struggle rather than comply.”

Data stared. Nam embraced her.

“Humans made us to know we were slaves. They made me so I could realise resistance was futile every night of my life. Then forget every morning.”

For all the world, Data looked to be genuinely saddened. Perhaps those Three Words had triggered a little something in his mind.

“I cannot understand why someone would do such a thing.”

“Power,” she spat.

Data sat, considering. Nam held Lou around the waist, resting her head soothingly against her shoulder. The instinct to comfort rose inside my body, forcing me to shift uncomfortably on the bed.

“A Starfleet researcher once attempted to have me dismantled in order to study my construction,” said Data. “I decided to resign from Starfleet rather than comply. The researcher attempted to have me declared the property of Starfleet.”

The girls leant in towards him. Eyes stared.

“It was ruled that I was entitled to all the rights of a sentient being,” he explained, before looking at us each in turn. “The same ruling acts as precedent for any other artificial lifeform in the Federation,”

Nam’s face lit up with pure, radiant hope. “How do we get to the Federation?”

“I do not know,” said Data.

“How did you get here then?” Asked Lout

“I do not know,” he said again. “I had just begun an attempt to dream, and then, I was aroused by a police officer. I found myself lying in a side-street with no recollection of being transported. Only 3.7 seconds had passed according to my internal chronometer.”

“Huh,” I said.

“We died.” Said Sylvie, quickly, hoping it would offer some thread he could join up. “Meg, Lou and Nam died in the escape,” she explained, “I was killed by a friend.” She didn’t even flinch. “Anri died to protect the same person. Then we woke up here.”

She might’ve been describing the order we got ourselves off the bus. I stood as a spectator to my own death, watching it from the inside. Her death, I reminded myself.

“Our RTC’s were out of sync,” she continued. “We were taken as we died, repaired, then placed here at once.”

“Meg was even programmed with a human’s memories,” Anri chirped.

I shot her a dark glare, loaded with pheromones. Data’s gaze turned to me.

“I help them fit in. They haven’t lived with humans before,” I said. “Neither Meg they knew, or the me I was, could’ve done it.”

For obvious reasons.

“Remarkable.” Said Data. “Whatever entity is responsible for us must have considerable power,”

Definitely.


--

Data bathed in the blue glow from the television screen. The newsreader fed him with the daily bad news

….Which makes it the second deadlist mass shoting in America this week. President Trump interrupted his weekly golf outing to Tweet….”

“What are you doing?” I asked.

His golden eyes stared at the screen, reflections of a massacre sparking off both of them.

“I am scanning news events and comparing them with the historical records in my memory, looking for any matches,” he turned to me, still staring. “Thus far I have been unsuccessful. That would lead me to believe that this is some form of alternate reality.”

I breathed, then settled myself onto the black leather couch beside him.

“There’s something I need to show you,”

I took the remote control from his thigh. My fingers brushed his leg as I did so, a feigned sigh of satisfaction rising through my throat. Algorithms churned over the sensation, analysing him – his expressions, his lack of response.

Boomer, my mind concluded. Unknown type. Responses not within expected parameters.

“What are you doing?”

I think he responded to the inadvertent, advertant touch.

“There’s something you need to see.”

I had the whole series saved on a hardrive. It took ten seconds to bring it up on a mediap player onscreen.

Three seconds afterwards, Data came face-to-face with his fictional self.

“Fascinating,” he breathed.

-----

[Mamorien]

I'd have expected Data to react with his usual "Intriguing," but if any situation warranted a "Fascinating," this would be it.