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Page 16.
 Wrapped in her dress and her stole again, she kissed him passionately and laughed. “There is no escape for you, is there?”
He had to admit: “Whatever it is you do to me, it is a good price for being a prisoner. Until I walk out the door.”
She dropped onto a couch and gestured for him to sit. “Thank you my love.”
He kissed her, while resenting her and wanting to be free, but he said: “Thank you.”
“That was so great.” She looked at him pertly, reclining to one side, not a princess now but a simple young perky girlfriend. “There is no man in the world like you.”
He shrugged, feeling drained and good and momentarily in woolly paradise. The feeling would not last, he knew. “I have to go soon.”
“I know,” she murmured sympathetically. “Wouldn’t you rather stay while I suck you?”
“Yes.” Honestly, yes. But honestly, no.
“You need your freedom,” she said in answer to her own question. “Have you meet my Lelli?”
Before he could answer, she raised a delicate, feminine hand and snapped her fingers. In answer to that flash of mauve, that snap, a shadow detached herself from a wall nook. “Meet Lelli.”
The djia stood before them demurely, as Stella might. Lelli’s pleasantly penciled phantom face redrew in pleased, wiggling lines. It registered the ghost of a wide, pretty smile. “So pleased to meet you.”
“She was watching us,” Lyxa said, ever to be provocative.
“They don’t understand sex,” Jared said as he lay back, winded and rubbed his forehead with both hands. Session over. Life to resume.
“I had her printed from my neural kelp tree 3/di,” Lyxa said. “Didn’t I, baby?”
“Yes, Lyxa.”
“She will be my standby since you took my Stella away.” Lyxa pouted.
“You gave me Stella,” Jared said. “And you cannot have her back.”
“They are adorable, aren’t they?”
Jared didn’t answer. For a moment he had a dreadful feeling that she might take Stella away, and he would not be able to stop her. The djia were programmed in certain ways, and of course Lyxa had ordered Stella made to obey Jared but so she, Lyxa, could override Jared’s commands if she wanted to.
Lyxa took Jared’s cheeks in both soft palms as she stared into his eyes. “I wouldn’t think of taking her from you.” At that moment, more than any other, Jared realized that his lover was totally insane. “That is why I had this dear baby Lelli made to be my shadow.”
With growing horror, Jared pushed her gently away.
Lyxa seemed not to notice. She had a long habit of teasing or angering him, and then ignoring his temper. “Lelli is there to protect me.”
Jared shook her wrists gently. “Is that why Stella is there? To protect me?”
Lyxa shook her head faintly, while smiling a dazzling, distant smile. “No, she would not be there for you to step into.”
He shook the poor crazy rich girl’s wrists. “What do you mean?”
“Silly. If I get hurt or die, I simply step into her. She becomes me, and I resume life as if nothing had happened. I will look just like my old self, and you’d never know.”
Jared let go of her wrists and laughed. “I would not want to become you or Stella.”
“Stella is me,” Lyxa whispered. “I am with you at all times.”
He shook his head. “If you were with me, we’d be fucking night and day. Stella hasn’t got a clue.”
“But if I stepped into her, she’d become me.”
“I don’t get it.”
Lyxa sat up. “Progress. New technology. Watch.” She raised her hand and snapped her fingers again.
Lelli approached, dropping her flimsy gown so that she became a statue of flickering ashen lights with a vaguely sketched face; a cartoon figure; a mannequin; a femmequin; a hallucination; a diaphane. Jared swallowed hard, feeling his lunch rising in his gorge. As with Stella, Jared noticed that the djia were the same height and general appearance as Lyxa, though they were half invisible, and the visible part was a sort of staticky (but silent) pencil sketch that kept redrawing. Beautiful in a spectral, haunting, cartoonish sort of way.
Lelli stood by as Lyxa dropped her clothes and nakedly approached her. Lyxa said over her shoulder, “Watch this.”
Jared was paralyzed with shock as Lyxa stepped into Lelli as if running into her on the street. What happened was over in a fraction of a second. Lelli reached around Lyxa to embrace her. At the same time, Lyxa’s dead body slipped like a boneless bag of rubber to the carpet and lay sprawled. Instantly, Lelli’s flickering sine waves and pencil lines resolved into a perfect analog of Lyxa’s features. She’d become Lyxa.
“See?” Lyxa-Lelli said. The voice was exactly the same. Everything was the same.
“I could live on forever in this new body, and if that dies, I’ll have another replacement ready.”
Jared rose, feeling sickened. He didn’t want to say this: It isn’t natural. And they become demi-humans with all the rights we have, except for their freedom. We are not legally allowed to hurt them, kill them, or in any way to be cruel to them. The look he gave Lyxa should have said it all, but she was beyond cognition.
Lyxa-Lelli spread her arms in a vague gesture and said: “I’m not ready to be dead so I’ll just get back into my old body that I’m used to.” She bent forward, spread-eagled the crumpled body on its back, and got on her knees between its legs. “Although this feels just like my old body. It might as well be my old body.” So saying, she spread her arms and swan-dove into the dead woman in a belly flop.
Instantly, the dead girl shoved the pencil-girl away and rose. Lelli staggered to one side, righted herself, an in a few seconds looked like her normal redrawing self, all random flickering and dancing sketch-lines and sine waves.
Lyxa laughed and rose, doing a quick jig as if at the gym. She flailed her arms crosswise a few times to restore circulation. “See? Good as new.”
“I have never seen anything like it in my life,” Jared said. More than ever, he wanted to run from here and never come back.
As he dressed, she lit a small opium pipe, offering him some. He shook his head.
“Don’t be a stranger my love.”
I have to move on with my life. His eyes were shouting, but he did not say it.
“Take good care of Lelli.”
Smoke trickled from her mouth into the air as she regarded him with feigned surprise. “Really. And I am nothing? Jared, you hurt my feelings.” She pouted a little bit.
He sat beside her. “I love you. I have loved you from the time you took my life away. I am as much a prisoner as Lelli or Stella in my own way.”
She giggled. Her eyes looked half closed, but she managed to continue expertly to torment him. “You are too strong a man, Jared. I can’t let you go, so I am your prisoner as well.” She reached out with one hand and grasped his chin almost painfully. “Do you have any idea how it torments me not to have you by my side and in my bed every day? I know that will never work. But don’t you see? I could have anything done to you, including murder; you could even become a eunuch like Garth.” Seeing his look of horror, she laughed. “But then I wouldn’t have that powerful motorcycle cock to suck. I like it when you treat me like a rag. Nobody else has the courage to act like my equal. Only you, in this entire galaxy, and I love you for it. That’s why I gave you Stella, and I’ll give you anything else you want. Just not your freedom. But you are way better off than you would be in Lesht, you peasant, or in some dirty old attack cruiser risking your life, for what, so rich playboys and playgirls can have everything they want and you die for them. Trust me, my love, you don’t know how good you have it. This world is going to end soon.”
Jared finished dressing. “I see you’re moving the dinnerware out. Where to?”
“That’s a secret, my love. Time to kiss this ancient pile goodbye. I get all the intel, you know. I have spies everywhere. The Ankhmen will ravage the human sector. The Raskian idiots think they can take over, kill the Ankhmen, and replace your old Mercurian order. Make me laugh. I know what’s coming. A thousand alien species are waiting to run through the streets here, killing any humans they find. Time to die, my friend. Time to die or move on. If you’re smart, you’ll come along.”
Jared was ready to walk out. He was dressed, and pinned to the ground before her only by the urgency and insanity of what she was saying. In the marrow of his bones, she felt she was speaking truth. Only the question remained: would one die as a free man, or save one’s skin by surrendering into slavery with this foreign princess?
“Go, darling.” She sucked on her pipe. “You’ll come to your senses when reality hits. We’ll be in touch soon. I promise. Ta-ta.”
“So long, Lyxa.” He whirled and started for the door.
“Jarry.”
He stopped, turned, and looked at her.
“And what about my dear little surrogate Stella? How is she treating you? How are you treating her?”
“We get along. We are friends, as far as that may go.”
More smoke. “She is a demi-woman copied from my template. I gave her to you, Jared. You should feel honored. And you are ahead of your graduating class in rank, pay, privileges, everything. Plus you get to make love with me, and I treat you like my lord. You have much to be grateful for.”
“You’re right,” Jared lied. “Be well, my dear.”
“You too, lover. I’ll call for you soon. Bring me Stella so I can have a chat with her and see how she is doing.” Lyxa added pointedly. “How you are treating her.”
“She is happy with me,” Jared said, while Lelli rushed to open the door for him. This had not gone as planned, nor any better then previous visits. It was always the same old stalemate.
Leaving her, with those dazed looking eyes as she sagged slightly to one side, Jared stepped into the hall, where Garth waited. Jared followed Garth, without a word exchanged between them.
Jared rushed down the endless, winding ancient palace steps, and emerged on the streets outside with a sigh of relief.
At that moment, the clocks in a thousand bell towers around the city tolled, signaling that the old year was dead and the new year had just been born. It was 5000 OC, a new millennium, and much change lay in store for everyone.
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Copyright © 2018 by Jean-Thomas Cullen, Clocktower Books. All Rights Reserved.
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