MOAB

Chapter 5i^3

Chapter 5i^3

His eyes rested on her ass.

Ourania was monitoring his readings as always, and she was concerned about him the last few days. He was deviating away from gnosis, distracted and generally off.

Yanni was firmly planted on the couch, only instead of watching some game he was simply staring at the wall most of the time.

“Why don’t you take a hot shower? I turned on the heater a while ago,” she told him and he agreed.

He threw his socks over his shoulder and took off his clothes, leaving them in his wake. Yanni had developed a carefree attitude the last couple of weeks. Ourania picked up after him and put them in the laundry. She never complained of course, so gradually the usual male sloppiness had turned into something that any woman would forcibly object to.

The only thing she never touched was the notes. No matter how many, no matter how crumpled, no piece of paper was to be disturbed. Ourania knew that something discarded one day might be precisely what he was looking for the next one. She left everything as it was, and if Yanni threw away something she would pick it from the trash and store it neatly in a cardboard box. You never know.

He wasn’t shy. He knew that Ourania was a gynoid, a sophisticated piece of machinery made to accommodate his needs. He felt relaxed around her, and that was due to a deliberate effort on her part and manners. That’s why he had no reservations stripping in the corridor and walking to the bathroom naked.

Ourania picked up the clothes and looked at him through the steam. She was failing her program parameters.

She didn’t want to fail.

She placed his clean clothes for him on the bed. She had already decided which ones were comfortable enough, and had thrown away the ones who chafed from day one.

She closed the window shutters and turned on the desk lamp.

She sat on the bed and waited for Yanni to come out.

A few minutes later, even without taking a reading she could see that his mood had improved. He walked in the room, rubbing his body with a towel and found the clothes exactly where he expected them.

“Yanni, is something bothering you?”

He half-dressed himself and sat next to her. “Nai. My birthday is coming up,” he said, as if that explained every woe in the world.

“Aren’t people normally happy about their birthday?”

“Yeah, of course. You don’t understand. There is this thing Einstein said, ‘A person who has not made his great contribution to science before the age of 30 will never do so,’ and it’s been drilling my mind.” He stared at the floor.

“You do understand that what Einstein said was based on empirical evidence, right?”

“Yeah, no, I understand that. I just don’t feel that sharp anymore. I used to be able to juggle so many calculations and variables on my mind, but now I need to backtrack all the time.”

She smiled at him and said, “It doesn’t matter, that is why we have notebooks to scribble on!”

He looked back at her and laughed. “Yes, definitely. We can’t get enough of them lately.”

Ourania put her hand on his leg and leaned towards him. She made sure to position her face lower than his, so as to look up to him with her synthetic eyes. Her touch brought up a reading in her field of view. The diagrams lit up in blue. Heartrate did a small hiccup and then jogged on steadily upwards. This was definitely no time for revolutionary physics work.

She paused for a beat to let his eyes wander on her body and then said, “You can have me, you know.”

Yanni stood up and put some distance between them. “Ohi. No. I’m not that guy. I have a wife.”

She leaned back and propped herself up with her hands. She tilted her head a bit and turned her leg inwards. The resulting effect was a pose a painter would drool over and then run scurrying for more blue.

“You do look, though.”

“Looking is allowed! You can’t go through a marriage without letting your partner look,” he said, stringing the words together and trying to hastily make his case. “Thalia and I look at people all the time. At the beach, she can look at suntanned bodybuilders all day for all I care. And she brings me celebrity magazines and says ‘Damn, this girl is hot, right? Just look at those boobies!’ No, looking is allowed. Doing… having… is not.”

“I’m not human, Yanni.”

“You sure do look like one.”

She monologued. “A smiley. One curve and two dots, and you see a human face. What is the minimum you need to see a human being? What has to be said, what has to be laughed?” Then she said in a normal tone while presenting herself with her hand, “This is the minimum. You can’t hurt my feelings, Yanni. Nothing will change. This isn’t complicated, it’s simple.”

Yanni found himself taking a step closer.

She didn’t need a haptic reading to monitor his arousal level.

She let her blue dress slide down from her shoulder.

Yanni came closer.

He surrendered.