4

She knocked at the door of the apartment, to be answered a split-second later by Masahito. She turned around to shout a thank you to Works for the ride and entered after giving a smile to the handsome young man.

"Hey there!" She said. "Hope you won't mind me staying for a while on big boss' orders." Masahito chuckled and motioned her to follow him to the kitchen.

"It's no problem at all. Get used to it; the Crate is one really solid community! All right. So quick briefing on the house: in front of the entrance, you could see the living room, to the right there's your bedroom, kitchen here's dead center of all our activities - Exi and I are absolute gourmets - to the left of the entrance was the dining room, and to the left of the kitchen, you see those four doors? First at the right is the little washing machine room, the one further down is the washroom, the one at the left leads to the office, and the one at the far end leads to our bedroom."

"So I get to have a bedroom of my own!" Elise grinned. "I can't help it, I feel so human!"

This remark made the young man bow in thanks. "Anything to please you, my lady! The room's set up with a TV, a book shelf, a computer and a movie-on-command with unlimited access, so feel free to go through the entire repertoire if you feel like it; it's not gonna cost us more anyways."

"Hmm-hmm. But living out there in public, that must be dangerous for you, isn't it?"

"Nope, not at all! We live on the same principles as the black market operators. Have you ever heard of the saying 'Never conduct business in The House of God'?"

"Well, this phrase became famous after the bar burned down. It was the black market's way of saying don't do it where everyone can see you. If you think about it, it's no wonder robbers wear masks. It's a double life. Even better; it's like the mafia! You know? The guy who takes care of all the organized crime so well, the police can't suspect him of anything and he can walk the streets like anyone else? We do our best to make that happen. Who cares if there are suspicions? The big argument is that they have no proofs. I have been interrogated before, and every time, they sent me back home with a little 'sorry, wrong person'."

"You can recognize Department guys in the fact that they do not wear any badges or have identification." Masahito turned around to give a quick check to what was in the oven. "Hmm, looks good! Uh, yeah. Basically, they'll call you up, claim they're from the police, and flash a card at you. It's bluff. If you look hard enough, you'll notice it's just a regular identification card. If they approach you, tell them off and keep on doing your business. They can't take you away in public like that. But if you're alone and they come at you, run like fucking hell!"

"Great! We're eating a pork roast for dinner. I heard from Works that you could shove stuff in your mouth with no problem, that's right?"

"Wow..." Masahito took a beer out of the fridge. "How in the world can you do that? I don't have all the info yet, and as far as I know, eating androids have been invented only five years ago... And even then, it's a fake. After each meal they have to go next to the trash can and barf the whole thing out because it's just put into a storage tank inside them. Crazy rich people. Some of them even have sex with those droids, can you believe that?!"

This made the man turn around with the most puzzled expression on his face. Elise grinned at him until he raised his eyebrows and opened his mouth to show he had (finally) understood.

"To make a long description short, I have a rudimentary digestive system." The android continued. "It's effective enough to process everything with no waste."

"Exactly. Thus my beautiful black-skinned legs and their cute little spiraling pink dots."

She was about to continue when she heard a loud flush coming from the bathroom. The bathroom door opened...

"There she is!" Masahito said with a grin. "Elise, I'd like you to meet Alexanne, my teammate and girlfriend."

The woman smiled at Elise and glanced at the android's hand, waiting for a handshake. Yet, it never came. The Insa was frozen in place.

Fatal exception. Elise didn't know which of the six hands she was supposed to shake.

It didn't take a genius to know she was a gun user. I can barely imagine her swinging a blade around. Besides, I don't know if sabers and swords are still used nowadays. Maybe they have more powerful guns now.

I immediately began a calculation of the probabilities relating to her shooting and mine, how such-or-such a gun affected her firepower versus my own shotgun and sword combo. My options were slim. With what I had, I expected my analytic results to be barely sufficient at best. They came to me as even worse.

#103

I gradually understood the origin of Shrike's absolute jealousy even though she had everything in the world, according to me at least. It had begun one night, I was with the others and listening to Whatley's life story when I think I heard Shrike in the other room blurt out something along the lines that if she had been a human, she would have been able to enjoy sex. Thinking about it, I realize how shallow an android's life can get.

We are always awake. We don't understand sensations and emotions like humans do, despite our complex programs and files. Sometimes, hell, make it once a week, we have to ask why is so-and-so angry like that, what's going on, we're totally lost... It took me a while before I could understand the full range of emotions, and even then, I wasn't that good at it. I knew happiness from sadness, but that was vulgarizing, putting things in their simplest terms. Emotions consisted of billions of number to us androids, and those numbers made no sense. However, we needed them. This way, we could recognize our friends from our foes and know who had to be helped out first. With emotional programs, we could react the way humans wanted us to react. If people hated someone, chances were we hated him too.

We don't eat, we don't drink, we can't play - we're dead on perfect in almost every game - and we can see all the movies and hear all the songs of the world in just a few hours, due to our ultra-fast processors. We didn't need to remember the songs or movies. All we had to do was make a text file, put down "I watched this-or-that movie." and if we were to talk about it often, then we'd save it. We were walking memories.

And if we didn't spend our lives remembering and socializing, we fought.

Shrike never was the social type anyways...