Chapter 16: Chapter 3 – Part 4

They didn’t talk afterwards.  Not right away.  Wren didn’t wake up until Bonnie was returning from escorting Quentin back to the bay where his ship was docked.  She’d returned with the gift of food and water, and said nothing while Wren gorged.  Once she was feeling more herself, and once she was decent to be out in public, they headed back.  The ammo shipment had arrived, just as Bonnie had said it would, and the redhead busied herself with confirming the manifest and getting back to the vendor.

 

Wren was not looking forward to the conversation, and when she saw an opportunity she interjected that she thought she might have found a workaround to the ‘unhackable’ droid.  Bonnie seemed amused by her enthusiasm.

 

***

 

"Of course can get lah," Jackson grumbled, "but we do properly can or not? Otherwise ah, they trace back to me, then I jialat."

 

Wren sat back in the pilot’s chair, and chewed her cereal slowly.  Beside her, Bonnie was working a wire brush in and out of a disassembled gun barrel, but the redhead was barely paying attention.  That was Wren’s favorite, because she could observe Bonnie more overtly...

 

...but then Bonnie smirked, and Wren didn’t feel quite so smart.

 

"Ok. Dock footage. Look for?"

 

Jackson’s cam shrank and slid to the side, and next to that appeared another image.

 

“Is this live?” Wren asked.

 

“Yah.”

 

Wren sat forward, and tilted her head.  “Do you have control?  Can you zoom in on the right side there?  That big door.”

 

“Live feed cannot lah! How to—”

 

“Hold there,” Wren said, interrupting.  “Good.  Now wait.”

 

“Actually hor, what you looking for ah?” Jackson asked, less than a minute later.  Both of them squinting.

 

“Look,” Wren said, and then, more excitedly, repeated, “look!  There!  Did you see it?”

 

“See what see? I don't even know just now you kua simi.”

 

“Can you back it up?”

 

“It’s a live feed,” Bonnie said, without looking up.  “No, he can’t rewind.”

 

“Alright, alright, alright.  Watch.  Watch.  The two there.  Copper red on the head units.”

 

“Ah ok,” Jackon said, squinting again.  “I see them liao. So?”

 

“See how they’re navigating that crowd?  And each other?”

 

“If they didn’t look like robots,” Bonnie said, shaking her head slightly, “I’d just assume they were people.”

 

“Exactly,” Wren said, excitedly.  “Just like people!”  Then she got up and hurried around her chair.  “This is gonna work!  It’s a good plan!”

 

“Eh. You... you understand her or not?”

 

“Don’t look at me,” Bonnie said, shrugging.

 

“This,” Wren said, pointing with the tip of a screwdriver to the inside of the torso of one of the bots, “is enough hardware to do exactly that.  It’s autonomous!”

 

Bonnie said, “I don’t know who taught you how to make a point, but they failed.”

 

Wren cackled, and waved her hand wildly while putting the bot back.  “It’s not a drone executing the instructions of a central server.  It probably only gets minimal instructions.  That’s what I’m saying.  You wouldn’t need hardware like this if you had a mainframe doing the thinking.”

 

“And?” Bonnie asked, with a dangerous edge in her voice.

 

“And, when a unit like this gets instructions, like… like ‘go stand in front of this door’, that’s it!  Those are the sum total of their instructions.  It’s barely aware that it’s part of a pair.”

 

“又怎样?” Bonnie snarled.

 

“And,” Wren said, triumphantly, “they probably wouldn’t notice if there were suddenly three of them.”  She gave them a minute, waiting for it to sink in, but they just stared at her and shook their heads.  “I don’t need to crack the software in there to make that droid do what I want.  If I can replace the guts but make it look the part, the other ones probably won’t notice an extra guard hanging around.”

 

“Probably? Simi probably?! Eh!”

 

“Watch the footage!” Wren cried.  “Look at them when they move!  There’s no cohesion!  There’s no hivemind at work there!  These aren’t even first generation units!  They’re prototypes!  There’s no way the asshat who made these considered telling them what to do if they came up against counterfeit brothers and sisters!”

 

Jackson looked pensive, but Bonnie was still frowning.

 

“A robot only ever knows to ask the questions it was programmed to ask, and it takes time to learn what needs to be asked!  When they first started using planes, in… in World War I, they didn’t put the flags on them real big like they did later.  They didn’t know they needed to do that.  It wasn’t until there was a bunch of friendly fire that they figured out that hey, I have to be able to identify my friends.  That’s… that’s where IFF comes from!  That’s what this is!  Our only window for this is to be the first people to do it!”

 

“Wah you really bueh kiasi leh, you,” Jackson said.  “You neh go inside to see, anyhow just gasak-gasak one, liddat also can?”

 

“Educated guessing,” Wren said, holding up her index finger, “and remember;  I met this clown.”

 

“Once,” Bonnie added, sourly.

 

“He know some of them stolen one,” Jackson said.  “They confirm high alert.”

 

“Not this guy,” Wren said, shaking her head.  “Doesn’t matter how long many units he loses to corporate espionage.  He thinks he’s bulletproof.  It’s a good plan!  It’ll work!  I promise!”  She tapped rapidly at the keyset.  “Here’s my grocery list.  Do you think you can help?”

 

Jackson looked to the side, glancing up and down at something offscreen.  After a minute of pensive assessment, he said, “Can. Should be ok. Kathmandu I got a lot of kangtao. I know this guy, very steady one. I go talk to him first.”  Then Jackon’s feed winked out, depriving the cabin of the blue-tinged light it was adding.  

 

Wren nodded, pleased with herself, and sighed happily.  “It’s a good plan,” she said, for the third time.

 

“So…”

 

All it took was that one word, delivered in a charged tone that promised more to come.  The little hairs on Wren’s neck stood on end.  Judgement day.

 

“Are we going to talk about it?”

 

“Talk about what?” Wren asked, playing dumb as she moved back through the cabin toward the galley.

 

“You know what.”

 

Wren sighed, shoulders slumping, and leaned against the frame beside the bulkhead door instead of continuing through into the galley.  “What do you want to know?”  She folded her arms tightly across her chest and frowned.

 

Instead of the questions she wasn’t really ready for, or a probing that would become uncomfortable, Bonnie unexpectedly hugged her.  Wren was completely unprepared, with her arms trapped around her own torso.  The moment lingered quietly.  She just held her, and by the time Wren awkwardly untangled her arms to return it the redhead was backing up out of reach anyway.

 

“What was that for?”

 

“I could ask you the same thing,” Bonnie said, abruptly changing to a more insulted tone and punctuating her question with a punch to Wren’s upper arm.

 

Wren gasped, covering the bruised area with her hand.  “Ow!”

 

“What’s the big idea with you trying to hide something like that?  You never orgasm?”

 

Wren let her head roll back into her shoulder.  “It’s hard to talk about, okay?”

 

“Why?”

 

She shuffled from foot to foot nervously, but Bonnie remained right there.  No amount of dawdling was going to distract her at that point, so Wren took a deep breath.  “I don’t have a lot of sensation.  Not like other people do, I don’t think.  It feels good, and sex is nice, but… it doesn’t lead to anything.”

 

“Ever?”

 

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“That right there,” Wren said, leaning forward and pointing a finger, “is exactly why I don’t talk about it.  Now you’ve got that in your head, right?  Like surely not ‘never’.  Surely not.  I bet I can.  That’s what you’re thinking, right?”

 

Bonnie just blinked.

 

“Right?”

 

“...It... occurred to me, yeah.”

 

“So now you’re thinking, right?  What worked for Wren.  What made her twitch the most.  What can I do to fix this.”

 

“No,” Bonnie said, trying to interject, but Wren didn’t let her.

 

“I’ll save you the time.  I can’t.  A lot of women have tried.”

 

“Never?”

 

Wren rolled her eyes.  “So here’s what comes next.  You’ll convince me to let you try, and you’ll do your best.  It won’t work, so you’ll regroup and try again, and again, and again, and you know what?  Eventually you’ll get tired of trying.  You’ll see it as a…”  She waved her hands quickly, trying to make her brain go faster.  “As a metaphor for whether our relationship was ever going to work.  You’ll resent the effort.  Eventually you’ll start to realize that it’s not you, it really is me, which I of course know but that doesn’t make it any easier to hear.”

 

Bonnie chewed on her lip.  “But you like sex.”

 

“Of course I do!  I told you, it feels good!”

 

“Is this related to your back?  Your sensitivity void, like you said?”

 

Wren just nodded, unable to meet Bonnie’s gaze no matter how the redhead tried to lean.  Eventually, Bonnie leaned in closer until their foreheads were touching, and ran her fingers up and down the outer edges of Wren’s upper arms.

 

“So even after all of those surgeries, there were some things that weren’t fixed?”

 

“I didn’t know until years later,” she said, softly, “you know?  They poked me with a needle in my thigh, and I knew it was sharp.  They poked me with a cotton swab, and I knew it was dull.  Cured.  Hurray.”

 

“That must have been really hard, especially the first time someone tried and couldn’t.”

 

Wren stared through the floor and nodded.  “I learned to compensate.”

 

“Massages,” Bonnie inserted.  “Like you were saying.”

 

“Yeah.”

 

Bonnie licked her lips.  “So, the drugs.  That’s…”

 

“I mean, I need them.  To get hard, I mean.”

 

“You didn’t need one this big,” Bonnie laughed, giving her cock a playful nudge through Wren’s shorts.

 

“Felt like I did.  Felt like… like if it was big enough... and the drugs pushed me hard enough, I could just blow past the point where anyone would care.  You know?  If I leave ‘em breathless, then they can’t ask any questions.”

 

“Yeah,” Bonnie laughed, “but it… I mean, it looks like it takes kind of a toll on you.”

 

“You mean with the timer?  And the come down pill?” Wren asked, nodding

 

“What would happen if you didn’t take that?”

 

“And I kept going?  My heart would explode.”

 

“Wren!” Bonnie exclaimed, as she punched the blue-haired girl in the arm in the same spot.  “Are you serious?”

 

Wren bit her lip, smirked,  and nodded even as she massaged the now-larger bruise.  “Yeah.”

 

“Never again!”

 

“What??” Wren cried.  “No!”

 

“It’s not worth the risk!”

 

“Come on,” Wren pleaded.  “You love it!”

 

Bonnie gave her a hard shove.  “I love you, you moron!”

 

There was little space between Wren and the wall, so she bounced off it without hardly moving, but her whole world tilted dangerously.  “You what?”

 

It was Bonnie’s turn to roll her eyes.  She made a show of running her hand through her hair to tuck the framing strands behind her ear, and that did all kinds of wonderful things to her biceps, triceps and lats.  Wren had to shake herself.

 

“Uh…”

 

“Oh shut up,” Bonnie said.  “I know how you feel.”

 

Wren just licked her lips and nodded.

 

“Okay.  Compromise.”  Bonnie waited until Wren met her eyes before continuing, saying, “Maybe don’t throw all your pills out, but… can we try some things without them for a while?  See if we can find something that’s enjoyable and not quite so life threatening?”

 

“Fiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiine,” Wren sighed, exaggeratedly.

 

The redhead laid her fingertip on Wren’s nose.  “I don’t need that from you, and you don’t need to do that for me.  I promise.  Okay?”

 

“Fiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiine!”

 

Bonnie laughed, bounced up on her toes, and kissed Wren’s forehead.  “You’re crazy, and I love it.”

 

“I have a caveat,” Wren said, suddenly looking more serious.  “No more surprise guests… or at least, not until I figure out how I feel about that last one.”

 

Bonnie nodded and gave a crisp salute.  

 

At a ping, Wren eagerly peered over Bonnie’s shoulder.  “Jackson got back to us!”

 

“Yeah,” Bonnie said, turning as Wren walked around her.  “About that.”

 

“We can’t get everything we need here,” Wren said, looking through the communique, “but... we can get enough to get started.”

 

“Wren,” Bonnie said, meaningfully.  “You shouldn’t have contacted Jackson like that.”

 

“Why not?” Wren asked, without looking up.

 

“He’s… He’s got his own priorities, and they don’t always line up with… with ours.”

 

“What do you mean?”

 

“Maybe it’s just…”  She closed her eyes and shook her head.  “I don’t know.  It was different when it was just me.  I was trying to find answers about my unit, and where that went, and sometimes it felt like Jackson would give me a little nibble, to keep me on his side, so he could throw me at other targets.  His targets.”

 

“You don’t think you two have the same enemies?”

 

Bonnie’s face darkened, and her eyes became distant.  “Honestly, I don’t think I’ve ever really known who I was fighting.  Or why.”

 

Wren took a long, slow breath.  “Well, let’s change that.”

 

Bonnie just stared at her for a moment before nodding, with just the faintest smile.

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