ShowerKrogan

  I woke up on a freezing cold table, id out on a thin yer of rough paper that did nothing to prevent the cold metal from making me shiver.

  “Isabehcochiop,” my mouth was not responding to what my brain directed it to do.

  “Hmm?” Dr. Ava stood over me, peering down at me with a big, dumb grin.

  “C-cold. Why cold? Why am I so cold?!” My senses returned to me slowly as I was speaking.

  “Ah, yes. I suppose you would be, since you’re naked,” Dr. Ava gave me a hand and helped me sit up.

  “Yeah, that makes- what?! Why am I naked?!” I looked down to see I was still in my boxer briefs, at least.

  “Please stand, so I may begin the examination,” Dr. Ava stood back to give me room to flounder around while trying to get my body under control. I managed to stand up by leaning against the examination bed.

  “Where’s the puppy?” I asked when I didn’t see it in the room with us.

  I was in Dr. Ava’s office. Well, it was called an office, but it was a lot more than that word implied. She had most of her medical supplies in here so she could handle check-ups, small injuries, simple illnesses, among other things such as working on my Becca impnt.

  “Quinn has him. He was cooking him some fresh chicken; poor thing looked starved,” Dr. Ava said. I grunted a response and looked around the office a little more. That dog was about to have the best meal of its short life.

  The office felt as if it mostly existed to torture me. Why did they make the examination table metal? They could at least put a cover on it! All this fancy tech, but they don’t have an examination table with a heater? It was awful every time I wound up on that table.

  This room is underground, like most of the living quarters, and it gets pretty damn cold. It did not help that the floors, walls, and ceiling were all that same metal. The top two floors of the facility were all gss, but the rest of the facility was this grey metal that seemed to almost generate cold like an A/C unit. Great in the Texas summer, not so much once it was no longer over one hundred degrees outside.

  The weirdest part about her office was the cells on the left side of the room. They looked like small jail cells with a metal bench that went around the edge of the eight-foot cell. Both cells were identical.

  My best guess for their existence was if someone in the facility went rogue, got violent, gave out secrets, or did something the government did not approve of, then they were to be locked in there until someone was sent to collect them. Not a huge concern anymore with the state of the world, but I hoped to never end up locked in those cells. They seemed as though they would be rather uncomfortable.

  “So what happened to me, and why did you drug me? Again!” I said, thinking back on my first night here. It’s too much to go into now, but this has started becoming a habit of hers. She watched too much Dexter. A soft scarlet-colored glow caught my eye.

  In the corner of the room was Becca’s body. It was mostly bck with a dim red light emitting from the curvy chest. Of course, Dr. Ava designed the body to be… alluring. Something about putting important tech in protected areas. What a load of nonsense. Whatever, the doc was a perv.

  The red light would darken until it was almost gone before brightening up to that soft red glow. The changing brightness was to signal that her body was in recovery mode. Overall, the body looked very robotic until you got to the head. Long, straight, bck hair that fell past her shoulders. A beautiful face that almost looked too human. A cute button nose and red eyes that matched the glowing light in her chest. Plump and pink lips that had no purpose other than serving Dr. Ava’s perversion.

  The few test runs with Becca controlling the body had been a mind-fuck. I had to keep reminding myself she wasn’t actually human because her face sure looked human and she sounded so normal when she would speak. I needed to occasionally look at her robotic body when speaking with her to remind myself that she’s not a real human, but she would tend to be offended when I focused on her figure. I swore it’s only because I’m reminding myself she’s an AI. There was nothing weird about staring at the robot body!

  I hope she didn’t cause any major damage trying to force it outside before it was ready.

  Dr. Ava began to poke and prod around my body. She was making me bend in weird ways, lifting my arms and twisting, testing my reflexes, rubbing her face on my abs for reasons unknown, and making me curl into a ball and jump straight up. I felt like I was being prepped for a circus act. “I’m always pleasantly surprised by how well in shape you keep your body. You must have been crushing in high school,”

  “Uh,” was all I could say. She didn’t wait for me to formute a full coherent thought before continuing.

  “To answer your question,” Dr. Ava said. “This was an integral and pretty invasive update. Now you and Becca’s connection should be stable and exceptionally more powerful. If this works as pnned, no more nappy time updates. A few minor ones can be pushed through without putting you to sleep. So no more drugs. Unless you ask nicely. But if your body moved during the process, it could have damaged the connection and your muscles,” she pulled my clothes out of a bag and set them on the bed. I got dressed while she was expining.

  “Fine. I can’t believe I agreed to the drugging when I signed up for this. I didn’t expect you to be so excited to inject me at random times and pces. Did you drag me down here by yourself?” I asked.

  Dr. Ava shrugged and continued on, not bothering to answer my question. “See if you can speak to Becca by… I guess the best way to put it would be directing. Direct a thought to Becca; think at her if that makes sense. She should be able to hear you now.”

  How do you direct a thought? I decided to give it a try before asking and getting some smart-ass answer. I focused on picturing Becca and thought… at her, as if I was speaking to someone in front of me. A warm tingling enveloped my brain. It was almost comfortable. I tried to focus on the way it felt and sounded when she spoke to me.

  Grayson: Becca, can you hear me?

  Becca: Good evening, Grayson. It is wonderful to hear your mental voice.

  “It worked!” I shouted, and Dr. Ava jumped in the air with a double fist pump.

  Becca: Your thoughts are interesting. I believe the infatuation with Bryce Dals Howard is bordering on obsession and could be a cause for concern.

  “Alright, I want her out of my head. She can read my thoughts,” I said to Dr. Ava, and then I turned around so she could rip the impnt out of me.

  “Don’t be silly,” Dr. Ava said and turned me back to face her. “She can’t actually read your thoughts… right?”

  “Don’t ask me!” I said.

  Becca: There is no cause for concern, Grayson. I definitely canNOT read your thoughts.

  I thought hard about whether waterboarding an AI is considered cruel and unusual punishment. Becca said nothing even as my mental imagery took a more aggressive turn from there, so I will assume, for the moment, that she was messing with me.

  “Alright, let me show you something else with this update,” Dr. Ava rubbed her hands together like she was about to dive into her favorite meal. “I need you to say the following phrase. Becca, status!”

  “Okay… um, Becca, status?” I said.

  A blue box popped up in front of my eyes with a bunch of scrambled letters and numbers.

  “Whaaaat is this?” I asked and tried to shake my head to clear my sight.

  “Can you see it?!” Dr. Ava was too excited and grabbed me by the colr to pull me close to her face.

  “I can see something, can you see it?” I tried to break free from her grip, but was unsuccessful. She had ridiculous grip strength.

  “No, only you should be able to see it,” she expined and looked deep into my eyes as if she were trying to see the screen reflecting in them.

  “Yeah, but it’s a jumbled mess,” I said.

  Becca’s voice came from a speaker in the ceiling, “Please give me a moment to adjust to your brain’s specific processing now that the status screen is active.”

  While she spoke, the letters and numbers flew around the screen until they formed something legible.

  STATUS: GRAYSON EMCEE

  HEALTH: 86/100STAMINA: 48/100STRENGTH: 15INTELLIGENCE: 9 (LOL)MANA: 1CONNECTIONS:

  Mal Practus - Childhood friend.Bond - Strong (70/100)Location- UnknownSam (fake name) unknown st name - Random stranger but pretty and blonde, so he tried to bring her home. Left Grayson to die. Enemy #1. Bond - Okay (35/100)Location - UnknownDolphin with unicorn tattoo guy - unknown nameBond - Unrequited love. He hates you. Location - Probably on Sam (fake name)Dr. Ava Faroria - MILFBond - Good (52/100)Location - Actively in your faceBecca EmCee - Perfection incarnateBond - In your brain (so, kinda iffy)Location - Still in your brainBody - Recovering at the dockMISCELLANEOUS:

  Arousal - Low (4/100)SKILLS:

  Command: Due to the special connection between you and the marvelous AI, Becca, once per 24-hour period you can issue a command that Becca cannot disobey. Use with caution, as abuse of the skill or a damaged retionship can cause the skill to be revoked. Increased bonding will allow for more uses and a shorter refractory period.NO OTHER SKILLS CURRENTLY AVAILABLE. GIT GOOD.

  “Wow. I mean, like, wow. This is a lot to unpack here,” I looked up and down the status screen. It was weird, to say the least. Video game character vibes, but no leveling up or weird things like that. It shouldn’t be a surprise that an AI inside me could detect a lot of this and then present it in an easy to mentally digest way. “All this makes sense. Heath. Stamina. Yeah, yeah. Strength, intelligence, and arousal. All seems normal. Wait. Arousal? Arousal?! Why? Why arousal? Becca. The fuck?”

  “I am simply the brush, not the artist,” Becca said through the ceiling speaker so we both could hear her.

  “Ava?!”

  “Doctor,” she corrected me with her smug smile again.

  “You can just call me Grayson,” I said.

  “Haha, you cheeky dick,” she said and walked off to type into her ptop pced in the room's corner.

  “The longer I look, the weirder this gets. Becca, you clearly wrote most of this! The Sam breakdown is rude! And you took my st name? We’re not married! I guess you are a part of me though. I’ll allow it. But, Dr. Ava doesn’t have kids, so she can’t be a MILF,” I was scrolling through this nonsense status screen in disbelief.

  “I appreciate the compliment, Becca!” Dr. Ava said and shot Becca’s charging body a wink and some finger guns.

  “The skill screen is pretty cool and kind of a big deal that I would like to talk about, but why would you call the recharge time a refractory period?” This AI was giving me a headache. “What are YOUR arousal levels, Becca?!”

  “I feel no arousal since my body is not fully developed and is currently in a sleep state,” Becca said through her speaker.

  “Why mana? That’s not a thing in humans. This isn’t some fantasy world,” I said and waved the screen away. I don’t know if my gesture worked or it could tell my intent, but it seemed to get the message and disappeared from my sight. “Wait, circling back to what you just said. Is that body supposed to allow you to feel arousal?”

  “The mana attribute is a result of my readings. A presence of mana detected. Maybe something is off after the update. We will wait and see how the scans perform the next few days,” Becca said. She ignored my arousal question.

  “If mana didn't exist, how could your readings show it? They would need- Wait a second. What did that number by strength and intelligence even mean? Why was there an ‘LOL’ by my intelligence?” I walked towards Becca’s body to give it a few good shakes.

  “Weird things pop up in those readings sometimes. I’ll tinker with it to ensure it’s accurate,” Dr. Ava spouted from behind her ptop. “I am referring to the mana reading, not the low intelligence score. That tracks.”

  Becca: This would be a good time for your shower, before the good doctor comes up with additional things to do to you. I believe it would have a deeply positive effect on your current state of mind.

  “Choking a robot would have the biggest positive effect on my current state of mind,” I mumbled to myself, but moved on. She was right; I needed that shower.

  “I’ll see you ter, Doc,” I said with a half-hearted wave to Dr. Ava and started to leave.

  “Enjoy your private time in your private shower doing private things to yourself, or whatever it was you said. Don’t forget to wave to the camera while you’re in there,” she said back, and I was only partially sure she was kidding about the camera. “Actually, wait one moment.”

  The lights in the room dimmed to near pitch-bck. The brightest lights in the room were now Dr. Ava’s ptop screen and Becca’s body. Dr. Ava put her hands on the sides of my face and pulled my face within a couple of inches of hers. She was back to looking deep into my eyes as if she were trying to see the status screen. Her thin but soft-looking lips parted slightly, and I could feel her hot breath on my mouth. I could feel my body trying to push me closer to her. Her scent was so sweet despite running around killing zombies. I was getting dizzy and my thoughts were becoming rather singurly focused. She licked her lips, and they were now glistening in the glow of her computer screen.

  She then looked at my mouth and whispered, “I know you went through a lot today. I want you to know that I’m going to take fantastic care of you.”

  Becca’s voice bred from the speaker overhead, “Arousal levels increasing.”

  “Becca, the hell, dude?!” I yelled at the ceiling. My face felt as if it were engulfed in fmes.

  Dr. Ava let me go and walked back to her computer ughing, “bahahaha. I knew that would work. Nice! Still got it! Not a MILF my fat, jiggly ass.”

  “I might just walk outside and find a nice big group of zombies to tear me apart. This facility is a fucking prison, on pnet bullshit. I don’t think anyone at any of these other facilities has ever had it as bad as I do. I cannot deal with both of them,” I yelled as I left Dr. Ava’s office to go back to my room and contempted grabbing a nice toaster from the kitchen as a shower buddy.