relia-robot

Trans married robot/doll

[Robot/doll/moth/slime/NHP]-girl. DGN-001. I like writing!

See post-cohost writing at https://reliarobot.dreamwidth.org/, on tumblr at https://www.tumblr.com/relia-robot-writes, or collected long-form pieces at https://reliarobot.itch.io/


caffeinatedOtter
@caffeinatedOtter
A fic in the Apparat setting. See also:

As the service elevator nears the top of its travel, Byla Olma shrugs the tension out of her shoulders, waits for the doors to open, and goes to work.

The staffed areas of Parahandrar are few. The indwelt mechself is sufficient to operate the foundries which feed the shipbuilding, the shipbuilding itself and the outfitting; aside from partnered businesses and their respective staff, the only real crew on Parahandrar are as much for a sense of hospitality as anything else, the high Apparat feeling most at home with other humans about the shipyard's halls and corridors to be below their notice.

Byla Olma moves, in her maintenance uniform, with the automatic air of belonging of someone just doing a job; a job neither unbearable nor enjoyable, simply one they happen to be doing. She carries her toolbag, doesn't pay much noticeable attention to her surroundings, and occasionally twitches her head in the manner of someone paying more attention to something in their insystem, but without the polished poise to do so without a tell; a vulgar tic, stereotypical of the low.

Virid Hessh is intimately familiar with Parahandrar, up to the point her employment here ended. Ion Twelve Horizon would be killingly affronted if her own knowledge of the shipyard were to even become a topic of consideration; she assumes Parahandrar, the way one assumes the integrity of one's own body, the number and layout of its limbs.

But neither has freely set foot here in recent times.

Armed with layouts provided by Ion Twelve Horizon, Byla Olma walks routes that wind around the corridors, assessing the accuracy of Virid Hessh's recollections of their security. She stops twice, as she emerges from the furthest, least populated regions. The first time, she briskly enters a supply room, turns a junior steward's uniform out of the toolbag, and efficiently changes; maintenance personnel do not freely mingle in the more populated areas. Work boots exchanged for shiny, if no less servile, footwear. She extracts a small document case, sets the toolbag aside, and continues her route.

She moves, now, with the alert purpose and pleasantly blank customer-service face of someone whose momentary lateness might provoke tantrums of offhandedly life-ruining spite, carefully cradling the rigid document case in both hands before her as though it could be spilt like coffee or scattered from inattentive hands like gilding leaf. It acts as a deterrent, warding off casual demands she fetch and carry, a visible mark that she is already undertaking orders; that further demands cannot preempted her task, and so her available diligence is degraded, no matter the severity of any tantrum pointed at her.

The second time, bordering on the areas filled almost solely with the milling retinues and hangers-on of the stakeholders, not welcome or permitted in the meeting itself, she knocks smartly at the door of an empty conference room and enters. Painstakingly fitted into the document case are two heeled sandals, two cosmetic capsules, and a clutch purse; packed into the purse is a gossamer scandal of an evening dress — a metamaterial fabric sheath as sheer as soap bubble, and a white lace thong. She undresses and makes a neat stack: steward's shoes, uniform, her underwear, the empty case. She nudges the pile out of immediate sight beneath the conference table.

Dabbing fingertips into the capsules — quick-setting gels in gloss black and frosted matte pink — she swipes artistically, dark around her eye sockets and light across her lips, dotting black a few times across her cheekbones like gouache freckles and thumbing smudgey wings from the outer corners of her eyes. Dramatic; a calculatedly fading trend, hot enough still that she won't stand out as unfashionable, but neither appear on the cutting edge of people to notice, to get to know. The remainder of the pink gel she smears over her nipples, obscuring them on the flimsiest technicality.

She pauses for long seconds while the gels coagulate on her hands, peels off soft, fingerprint-indented blobs and fastidiously disposes of the evidence by eating them, before sliding on the thong, and over it the dress, which hides nothing. It's firmly on the vulgar side, while still within what one can get away with, in current style, if one has money.

Byla Olma smiles like someone vacuously cruel, who has never not got away with whatever she wants, and struts out on her strappy heels. She snags a tall flute of something bubbly and irridescent from a passing tray, as if she is entitled to anything she sets eyes on; circulates. Chats. Name-drops with just sufficiently familiar contempt, in a dozen conversations.

In the vast hall of the hollow plateau, atop which the stakeholder meeting will convene, while a drunk heiress with conspicuous engagement jewellery is breathily, handsily admiring the definition of her biceps, Byla Olma diverts her focus to her insystem for a moment. She show no outward flicker of any inattention; lazily petting her new friend's curls and seemingly admiring the view of Parahandrar's ship-studded sky through the huge windows surrounding the hall. Each pair of windows is separated by the rib of an elevator shaft, rising to the meeting floor above; most with a door onto the floor of this chamber, doors politely but firmly staffed by stewards armed with the stakeholder guest list. The executive elevator, however, has no door on this level, boarded somewhere below, in areas Byla Olma could generate no workable excuse to be wandering, were she discovered there.

Your planned route needs minor alterations, but this can work, I think — so long as you can get through the restricted areas to the executive elevator, and get it to open for you, she chirps to Virid Hessh, and pushes over her list of security observations. Up to you two morsels, now, as she invitingly tilts her head to allow better access for the mouth working up from the line of her shoulder to her neck.


Ion Twelve Horizon and Virid Hessh easily make their way up through Parahandrar's levels, armed with the knowledge they need to avoid human scrutiny. They have one encounter with likewise wayward visitors, a loud gaggle of young Apparat, and Ion Twelve Horizon simply ignores them: elder, frosty, on business. Virid Hessh walks a pace behind and half a pace to the side, expression blank: bodyguard.

The youths pay them, in turn, barely the attention needed to avoid running into them.

"Keep walking," Virid Hessh murmurs, when they pass from earshot, in response to her companion's audibly grinding teeth. "I know, Song Aloft. Just keep walking."

She keeps walking.

Only one other moment of frozen stress ambushes them, a senior steward walking from a doorway and coming face-to-face, within sight of the excutive elevator's door. The steward almost jumps aside, face astonished.

"Ion Twelve Horizon," they say, breathless, standing in a stiff pose of pantomime respect. "The meeting — I think it's begun, slightly. Do you need anything—?"

"Thank you," Ion Twelve Horizon says, body thrumming like a harp string. "No," and they are simply past and at the door, and Virid Hessh is holding her breath as the Apparat sends a security code from her insystem to it; and then, when it simply opens for them, is obliged not to let it out in a great rush until they have boarded and the doors are closed.

"Well," Virid Hessh says, staring at the inside of the door. "Here we go."

"This ends one of three ways," Ion Twelve Horizon says. "I win. I lose, and we flee. Or — I will not return to him, Virid Hessh. Promise."

"I already promised," Virid Hessh says.

"Swear."

"I'll shoot you dead before I let him take you back, Yafa," Virid Hessh says tiredly. "I promise, again."

"Take the baby," Ion Twelve Horizon says, and begins to shrug sharply out of the straps holding her child to her. "In case."

Virid Hessh grits her teeth, unslings her longarm and holds still while Ion Twelve Horizon yanks the straps tight around her, the baby bobbling his tiny head against her chest with great, ineffective feeling. She mutters something unintelligible, and reflexively checks over the unslung gun as the elevator decelerates to its upper stop.

The meeting chamber atop the plateau is a great transparent dome, sealed directly to the flat, metallic top of the plateau itself. Inside the edge of the bubble protrude each of the elevator shafts, blocky upthrust structures to disgorge the attendees; all silent, now, except for this one.

Outside, Parahandrar is spread out below like a map; great, slow shadows pass across the plateau in regimented time, as the endless stream of manufactured ships rises from the nearest factory-chasm in the surface.

There is no boardroom table in this massive space, simply the sweep of open floor. The stakeholders are arrayed as they wish to be, standing; listening to the meeting's opening remarks, and their attention stolen by the arrival of one of the supposedly now-locked elevators.

Five Arc Rising — Paramanuensis First Grade, husband to Ion Twelve Horizon — pauses in his speech-giving. He turns, theatrically; first his head, then all of him following, as if he is astonished by the dire, severe figure stepping out onto the floor, shadowed by Parahandrar's once security chief.

"Virid Hessh!" he says, making an open gesture of surprised welcome with both arms, the red silk of his sleeves whispering at the movement. "And who is this you bring?"

"You know me," Ion Twelve Horizon says, in a voice of murder. "You all know me. I am Ion Twelve Horizon Yafa Song Aloft; Firsthand, Eminence-in-Waiting, heir to Parahandrar, voice of Parahandrar. I have been prevented from speaking here, but I return."

Silence falls, with only the scattered hiss of whispers between attendees.

"You all know me," Ion Twelve Horizon says, with deadly fury, looking around them.

"I think I know my wife," Five Arc Rising says, eyes shining, smile gentle and perfect. "Virid Hessh, really. It's cruel to entertain delusion."

Ion Twelve Horizon shudders, fists clenched; past her, Virid Hessh watches faces — blank or tight or guiltily frowning — as they look down or away or fixedly at the scene in front of them.

Virid Hessh breathes smoothly, and lets her awareness settle on every weapon she has on her person.

"This is easily settled," Five Arc Rising says gently. "Mechself indwelt-Parahandrar, please; this person says they are Ion Twelve Horizon Yafa Song Aloft. You have known her since she was born; you have seen her grow, you know every injury she has ever suffered, you have witnessed her sorrows and joys, her marriage, every year of her life. Mechself: do you recognise this person to be my wife, Yafa Song Aloft?"

There is a long pause, and then Parahandrar's indwelt mechself speaks, chirping to every insystem in the room, remarkable only for the way in which it is just the same as any other mechself voice; unassuming, unobtrusive.

No, says Parahandrar.

A fic in the Apparat setting. See also:

You must log in to comment.

in reply to @caffeinatedOtter's post: