I'd just got into the feed ... a head of state ineptly shafting someone, just for a change ... when the alert tone sounded ... we had a visitor in-coming, apparently, and there sure as hell wasn't anyone due. Oh fucking brilliant, I thought, why me? Worse, when I'd taken a few deep breaths and calmed myself down enough to get a data feed, our new arrival was one of Xav's Protected ones. Crissakes, then why isn't he dealing with this ... oh, right ... he's in Deep Immersion ... saving the planet, cannot be disturbed. Bastard.
So, OK, its up to me, again, I thought, as I pulled up a vid feed of Arrivals, the nondescript, mainly – actually, totally – black room we used for ... well, arrivals. Or where the poor sods we'd dragged over here got their first sight of their new home, in other words. This one looked interesting ... not throwing up, for a nice change, but then ... not actually breathing, either, from the look of it. An urgent flip through the vital signs told me the conjecture wasn't far off the mark ... dangerously low blood oxygen ... dangerously high levels of opiates and their metabolites ... minimal higher brain activity. Jesus ... there was actual necrosis starting in her left leg and right forearm ... and ... oh, great ... a range of micro aneurysms in the brain stem ... tubercular nodes in both lungs ... Xav sure had some interesting friends, I thought, simultaneously wondering why this Protected one had been allowed to get into this state in the first place ... weren't they supposed to be continuously monitored?
Ah well ... ponder that another time, I thought ... we'd never had an incomer die on us before and I didn't want to have to explain to Xav why I'd lost this one ... so I shoved in a stasis field – wondering why the AI, which had exactly the same data as me hadn't already done so ... but then maybe he/she/it wanted to give us humans choices or something. Or maybe the illusion of choices ... but lets not go there.
Anyway, the AI confirmed stasis – basically a suspension of time around the body, giving the technology time to work out what to do about this one. If it – she – was savable, I knew, they'd save it. And in the meantime, we could all wait for Xav to stop being a boy scout and pick up the bloody pieces ... 
--- ---- ---- --- ----- ----- ---
OK, so Stasis() was invoked, eventually ... and I could file the calculated 34% probability that Zara would simply have forgotten the instructions, accidentally failed to react in time to the situation ... away for future reflection. Clearly, my human cargo were getting on better than they had been ... or perhaps their species solidarity outweighed their mutual antipathy ... and Zara's reluctance to have a potential ally of Xavier's around.
Which caused me to ponder, for a microsecond or two. Given that They – the AI network of which I was a contributing part – considered that we should respect Xav, trust his biological impetuses, I was now stuck with a very damaged human being ... if she'd been relying on the medical services on her home planet – even if anyone had thought to alert them – she'd be dead.
But she wasn't, and the initial projections showed a greater than 97% probability that we could repair – or, more accurately, rebuild – her to at least physical health. So now she was part of the family.
I love working with lesser species. No, really ... I do ...
--- ---- ---- --- ----- ----- ---
I came out of Immersion feeling like my brain had been rewired, which I guess to some extent it had been. I'd been plugged into the internet – and a variety of less public networks – for more than thirty hours, using what the Wisdom actually described as 'human intuition' to sift the packet streams – decoded and 'humanised' by my hosts – to guide the AIs to their goals ... which currently involved tracking the world's financial networks, finding out where the money was actually going, the reality behind the capitalist, free market bullshit. Yeah, I thought it was a ludicrous idea, too, when it was first put to me: There was simply too much data, I thought, too many codes, too many variables. But I'd underestimated the Wisdom, not for the first time, the sheer power of the filtering and analysis technologies ... and the usefulness of being able to observe the human side of things, undetectably, in real time. However secure those individuals believed their environments – or their meetings – to be.
So it was all interesting stuff ... but not exactly relaxing ... nor, I suspected, something my brain had actually evolved to do. Perhaps the Wisdom had made more changes than it had told me about? Well, maybe ... but then Zara appeared to be incapable of this stuff ... didn't seem to even understand its significance ... so maybe it was just me ... some quirk of nature. Put it to one side, for the moment, what I mainly needed was something to eat, something to drink – not necessarily for rehydration purposes – and then sleep. A lot of sleep ...
--- ---- ---- --- ----- ----- ---
I had the Wisdom tell me as soon as Xav emerged, so I got down to his Immersion suite – basically a couch surrounded by a mass of life support and monitoring equipment, housed in a completely shielded room – while he was still extracting himself from the umbilicals, drinking the nanobot recovery liquid the AI provided ... and before he'd got round to dressing. Which was a small perk, I felt ... he did still have a very nice body, even if he was a complete shit in a lot of ways.
Anyway, he was still pretty spaced out, like he always was after emerging, but that would carry on for a while and I had a problem I needed to pass on, to make his ... and I didn't see why that should wait. So I told him.
--- ---- ---- --- ----- ----- ---
OK, I thought, so Yvonne was here and here was I, looking down at her, surrounded by machinery and intubated in every available orifice ... and then some. I realised that this was the first time I'd seen her in about ten years, probably the first time I'd thought about her in five. It was all very weird ... I remembered being told about Protecteds – people who the Wisdom thought were special to its guests, who would thus be observed – looked after – while they were here, possibly plucked out of life threatening situations if they happened to get into them. I hadn't really been all that interested, to be honest – I was married to my work, as they say, never really had time for close personal relationships, so I didn't even ask who was on the list. And I'd never have guessed that Yvonne would even have been a contender.
In fact, observing her now as the machines crawled all over – and, I knew, through – her, I did have a brief pang of nostalgia. We had been close once; me a permanently broke post doc, her a picturesque barmaid in my local, albeit a barmaid with a surprising facility for biophysics, or at least for listening to me talking about it. No, that was unfair ... she'd made some interesting observations, even contributed to solving some of the problems I was working on. Hell, I'd once tried to credit her on a paper I published, a gesture which had not gone down well with the Prof.
But then ... I'd moved to Germany, she'd stayed in the UK, and by the time I got back she was no longer working in bars, she was a full time junky doing whatever it took to get the next bag. I'd tried to help, for a while, but it was pointless ... she was too far gone, I thought, or maybe I was just too preoccupied with my work to care enough. But, whatever. Scanning the data the AI was providing it was clear that time – and life – had not been kind to her ... even without the overdose that had nearly killed her she was basically, well, fucked. And even with the sort of technology being applied to her now, it was still far from clear that she'd be physically completely OK – and real doubts whether the brain damage she'd accumulated over the years would contribute to an even greater mental instability. We – or rather I – would have to take some tough decisions as the 'repair' process went on.
Not for the first time, I wished that Zara wasn't quite such a selfish, self-obsessed bitch ... or that I trusted the AI more. I really felt I could do with someone to talk to.
--- ---- ---- --- ----- ----- ---
The male's response was not what I expected and, again, I filed the anomalous response for future consideration. We had anticipated pleasure, perhaps relief, but what I had observed had been nearer to apathy ... perhaps even annoyance. Even now, my scans showed considerable activity in his cortex, indicating not a nostalgic review of memories ... as might have been expected ... but an active attempt to excise – or redefine – same. It was unexpected and that in itself was unexpected. Were there really things about these humans that could surprise us? This would prove most interesting to the Group, I was sure.
But that was for the future. My own review of Xav's history did not, of course, provide any new insight ... and neither did a similar scan through the vast quantity of data we had on our latest arrival. She was a woman of exceptional intelligence, whose potential had been crippled, in the context of her society and her time, by her low class status and a fatal self destructiveness ... inculcated by early trauma, sexual abuse by her father and others.
Well, no matter. She was here, and she had the potential to fulfil the role that Zara had never quite proved herself in. She was, in fact, potentially perfect for the job, life having left her with few scruples and no illusions, while her existential rage was definitely useful ... for the more 'hands on' side of the project.
. Whether we had room for two people in that line, of course, remained an interesting question. But that, really, was more Zara's problem than mine.
--- ---- ---- --- ----- ----- ---
Xav passed me in a corridor as he was heading back to his quarters, simply scowling at me and carrying on without a word. Well, fuck you, too, I thought. He was presumably going to catch up with some sleep, since even I knew that the Immersion involved a sustained period of enhanced cerebral activity, maintained by a combination of drugs and nanomachinery. I'd tried it a few times – or rather, it had been tried on me – so I knew what the after effects were like, but I'd never achieved any results, feeling myself to be merely immersed in an inchoate mass of data, sensations, none of which made sense. Presumably Xav could make more of it, what with him being a doctor and all, but that still didn't give him the right to treat me like dirt. He hadn't so much as looked at me – as a woman, I mean – since he'd first been brought here. And now some former flame of his had pitched up ... and was being patched up. So that even if she did look like a skeletal crone at the moment, she would emerge as a healthy thirty something. Or, given the caveats that even the Wisdom was applying to the process, a fairly healthy thirty something. I wondered what the AI had in mind for her, what she was actually doing here.
And in the interim, I had my voyeuristic image to maintain. So I had the technology summon up another illicit data feed ... a senior policeman, this time ... who was into nappies ... in a big way...
--- ---- ---- --- ----- ----- ---
I slept for almost fifteen hours, woke feeling pretty human, for a change. A quick check revealed that Yvonne was still heavily dependent on life support as the machinery effectively built her a new set of lungs and a couple of limbs, as well as doing a lot more detailed work across much of her brain. Amazingly, there was no firm estimate for how long the process would ultimately take ... and the Wisdom always specified these things to the second, almost as a point of pride ... just a range from twenty more hours to above forty. God knows what was being done in detail, I thought, then turned my attention to more immediately relevant stuff ... such as the digested results of my latest Immersion. Which were very interesting.
In fact, it looked like we'd cracked it ... firm and clear evidence of money flows through most of sub Saharan Africa, "aid" coming in, channeling through corrupt elites and slowly but surely ending up in a variety of American and European banks ... oh, and the odd arms company and such like. More to the point, we had names, dates ... everything ... including links to a variety of covert agencies across the "developed" world. The Wisdom had even calculated how many lives a year were being lost as a result. It was a very big number.
So. It looked like we'd soon be in business, would be able to move from our – OK, the AI's – current tactics of gently nudging the political and other processes in a direction that would be a little less disastrous for the future of the planet and begin to personalise the process. Which is to say, take the argument to the bad guys directly ... bringing them out here when we could do so without causing too much of a fuss, dropping in to see them where we couldn't. And I didn't for a moment think that that would involve having a friendly chat. These people had far too much blood on their hands.
And that, apparently, was where Zara came in. Frankly, she appeared to think that she was here simply to watch pornography – if real time, real life pornography – but the Wisdom seemed to have other plans, could perceive other talents. It was a bit of a mystery to me – the stuff she was digging up at present couldn't even really be used for blackmail, given that it seemed just about everybody in a position of power on the planet was at it – but I wasn't about to argue with the technology. So I thought I'd better go and see her ... see what she had to offer.
--- ---- ---- --- ----- ----- ---
Well, now, that was a surprise ... Dr Xavier McDonald himself wanted a quick chat with me, no indication what about, just a request to meet him in one of the meeting rooms down on the swimming pool / gym level. I had a check on the progress of the Yvonne woman, saw that things were still uncertain, thought that he probably wanted someone's shoulder to cry on. Even mine. Not that I felt particularly well disposed towards him, of course, but there are few situations that can't be turned to advantage if you try hard enough ... and I was a trier through and through.
So I signalled my assent – which is to say, gave the AI a time to pass on, then sat and thought a bit about tactics. And then I got changed ... as I thought appearances could be important in the circumstances.
--- ---- ---- --- ----- ----- ---
Zara was late, of course, arriving in the seminar room a good twenty minutes after the agreed time. The AI informed me that she'd spent the time metaphorically filing her nails - rather than suddenly having been caught up in tasks of actual significance – so I knew this was probably a ruse to annoy me. Well – a bit of a waste of time in more ways than one, there, then ... god knows I was annoyed enough with her already. But I had asked for this meeting, so I thought I'd put a brave face on it ... remembering times I'd had to intervene with underachieving students ... the importance of staying in control – of myself as well as the situation – not rising to any provocation, being clear about my objectives and the limits to any compromises that might be offered. Problem was that here I was hardly in a position to reduce the conversation to the standard 'shape up or ship out' ultimatum. Or at least, I didn't think I was ... Frankly, I didn't have a clue what the AI was actually trying to achieve or why, which also meant that I couldn't reasonably speculate on what its intended outcome was to all this. And what was Yvonne doing here, anyway?
All such musings were abruptly curtailed by Zara's belated arrival. She was carrying a bottle of wine and a couple of glasses, I noted, disgustedly, and wearing ... well, not very much. Specifically, a sort of lace chemise ... white ... and a single glove, also lace ... covering the scars on her hand. She'd also tied some sort of chiffon ribbon in her hair. It was not, frankly, what I would consider appropriate for work ... in fact, if she had been a student, she'd have been out on her ear, there and then ... although, dressed like that, she'd probably have been arrested even before she got to my office. I probably sighed, or something, but then resigned myself to the situation. She might think this was a party opportunity but I, at least, had work to do. So I decided to get on with it. Its that sort of focus that made me a successful academic, after all ... ignoring the games and sticking to the question in hand.
--- ---- ---- --- ----- ----- ---
Xav clearly clocked me as I came into the room, and a look of profound despondency came over his face as he noted the wine I was carrying, the clothes I was wearing and, I knew, the stuff that the clothes so artfully failed to conceal. He might be a prick, I thought, but he was male ... and, I thought, I knew his type. So I carefully put the alcohol down on a table in a corner of the room and arranged myself demurely – well, as demurely in possible, given that I was wearing about 50 square centimetres of transparent nylon – in a chair across the table from him. Then I looked interested, intelligent and concerned, making and holding eye contact as I asked him how he thought I could help, what he wanted to discuss.
Give the guy his due, he got straight to the point, gave me a fairly rapid précis of the results of his latest 'explorations' and some of the implications that the AI had mapped out ... including a probable change in emphasis in the activities that we'd be pursuing. I gave him about half an hour, maintaining eye contact throughout, arms folded carefully in front of my breasts, resisting the temptation to subtly squeeze them together for him, and generally acted the engaged and active participant. Actually, some of the stuff was quite interesting ... I'd never have dreamed that the Immersion process could deliver quite so much hard data ... and some of the names ... the agencies ... involved were startling, to say the least – even to a hardened cynic like me.
More to the point, his conclusion that we were going to get more active – that the watching and noting phase might be coming to an end, at last – was genuinely good news. I'd been here quite a lot longer than him, rescued from an all too imminent gang rape back on the home world, and I knew that we'd previously been a lot more active. My putative attackers, for instance, had been given a free ride over here just as soon as I'd recovered enough to be able to deal with the situation ... and had probably not been too happy with what they found when arrived. Well, at least not if the screams were anything to go by ... or the whimpering or the ... gurgling, come to think of it. I hadn't really watched all that much of it ... even I have my limits ... but I knew that it was long, exquisitely painful and ... finally ... very, very, fatal.
Well, the bastards deserved every moment of it, I thought, turning my attention back to Xavier. I didn't think he would be quite as impressed with that particular outcome.
So I said, "OK. We used to do a bit more of that in the old days – a couple of years or so ago – but it kind of got a bit tricky when people started to notice that numbers of their fellow significant human beings were simply disappearing – or dying in even highly convincing accidents – and started to join the dots. They didn't get very far, obviously – no one was seriously going to propose extra terrestrials as a likely cause and the clues they had didn't really make much sense otherwise – but the AI got a bit concerned that we were engendering a bit too much paranoia among some of the powers that be ... and that they might start to take it out on each other. You know, with nuclear bombs, that sort of thing. So we reined back ... cost us a couple of my previous colleagues, too – your predecessors – who couldn't accept the new party line. That's when we stopped recruiting gung-ho idealists ... started looking for tired old realists like us."
I did wonder how he'd take the 'us' – was that a bit premature, at this stage? - but he continued to look at me in silence, apparently surprised by my involvement with what he'd been telling me, my willingness to engage with him on all of this. Well, I thought ... under-rate me at your peril ... until I realised that I'd leant forward to emphasise something, at some point, and that my breasts were now lying on the table in front of him ... only too clearly visible through the thin material ... and that neither of us had noticed.
I wondered just how much I had been acting.
--- ---- ---- --- ----- ----- ---
Well, that was a surprise ... not the petulant display I'd been expecting but rather a show of genuine interest ... with some useful questions and, now, some new information. It occurred to me that I knew next to nothing about Zara ... how she came to be here, what she'd done before ... and, in fact, had hardly talked to her since she'd done the meet'n'greet stuff when I first arrived. I remembered that meeting, now, how I'd got severely turned on by the sight of Zara in a one piece jump suit ... put it down to delayed shock or something ... and then got embarrassed. And had basically ignored her since then. Just another one of Dr McDonald's sub-optimal coping strategies, I realised, contemplating the woman sitting opposite me anew.
Unfortunately, this made me aware again of her state of dress – or, rather, undress – and that she was leaning over the table towards me ... with both breasts squeezed onto the table in front of her, nipples and wide areolae only too visible. I felt the sap began to rise, so to speak, and the mortifying embarrassment that always accompanied it. As I forced myself to look into her eyes, again, though, I think she picked up on my reaction, and sat back in her chair, breasts still only too visible but not quite so provocatively posed. I decided it was best to stick to the subject – keep control and all that – and began to share some ideas I'd been thinking about. She still looked interested, but a little more relaxed ... her body language a lot more ... open ...
"I had wondered about how anything we might do from here might impact on the folks back home, to be honest. I mean, some of the names on my list are simply dictators and removing them would at best get them replaced by someone equally as bad or, at worse, lead to outright civil war. Similarly the grey people in finance and the various government – I use the term widely – agencies. OK, we now have a lot of facts that in theory could be used to ... inconvenience ... them, but the fact is that the web is so wide it would be almost impossible to intervene directly without seriously fucking up the entire planet's operations. I mean, remove or even severely restrict all of these people and we'd need to construct an entirely new system of government ... which would be messy, to say the least."
She nodded at that, looked thoughtful and went and picked up the wine bottle, poured two glasses, handed me one, her left nipple just brushing my shoulder as she did so. Then she returned to her side of the table, sat down and looked at me. "Worse than that", she said, taking a sip. "We worked out that any such intervention would immediately be seen as coming from outside – no-one could plausibly do anything of the sort within current structures ... just look at what happens to the occasional well intentioned politician who does make it to the top – and ... well ... that would be a disaster. Take the history of all the peoples that we Brits colonised as an example, the psychic – and material – effect of the introduction of superior technology and an alien, dominant culture. And what the Wisdom has to offer makes steam ships and rifles look like cowry shells and glass beads. I mean, how do you think the human population would react if they knew that there was no longer any such thing as privacy, just for starters?" She grinned, continued, "That people like me can and do observe their most secret and depraved activities ... and laugh at them?" Another pause, "So, whatever we do will have to be subtle ... unless they do get to the stage of self annihilation, of course, when the gloves come off ... which is about five years, given their current degradation of the biosphere ... but if we want to avoid that, we do have to have to act covertly, but also quickly and effectively. Quite a nice poser, really. And just the two of us to do it, at least as far as we know. Oh, and a nearly omniscient AI and his/her chums."
I felt the rebuke, whether it was intended or not – she was right, it was a tall order, and it didn't help that we'd so far failed miserably to even communicate with each other. I raised my glass to her in tacit acknowledgement of the fact, then continued, thinking aloud, really.
"What I'm wondering is whether we could intervene more on an individual level, get people to gradually clean up their own acts by a combination of carrot and stick – at least the threat of exposure if they don't co-operate ... and at least the promise of protection from all the people they'll piss off if they do. Combined, I thought, with maybe a little in-house – umm – education for some of the more shadowy players ... that is, scaring the shit out of the sort of people who'd find it difficult to go public with the experience. I think we need to sit down and go through names and details ... work out the weak points ... maybe even pilot the process in one of the more obscure parts of the system. Obviously, we'll need to engage with the Wisdom but ... well, whatever it says about not routinely monitoring us ... I think it will already be very aware of this conversation."
--- ---- ---- --- ----- ----- ---
As if I would do such a thing, I thought, intrigued by the turn the conversation had taken ... and the fact that Xavier had chosen to explore these ideas with Zara, initially, rather than with me. Not that it actually made a difference – I was, of course, constantly monitoring them down to the molecular level – but it was an additional factor to consider. Xavier had spent virtually all his life in laboratories, trusted machines far more than people, in many respects, but still could not bring himself to trust in me or my motives.
Wise man, I felt, turning my attention back to their conversation, even while I wondered whether introducing the Yvonne factor would prove to be a needless distraction ... though, I knew, she could always be used for something ...
--- ---- ---- --- ----- ----- ---
I suspected Xav was right about the monitoring – knew that at least one of my former colleagues had been ... dispensed with ... due to a rather naive faith in the Wisdom's all round niceness – but I'd grown used to the idea, able to cope with the pangs of paranoia it induced. Hell, that was part of the reason that I did all that voyeuristic stuff ... kind of a diversion from some of the things I really didn't want it to know about. Oh, that and the fact that it was fun, too, of course.
Nonetheless, back in the here and now, I appeared to have reached some sort of rapprochement with Xav without even trying, which was odd. Sitting watching him now, calmly setting out his ideas as if saving the world was just another scientific conundrum to be analysed and resolved, carefully, logically, I felt a strange surge of affection for the guy ... and a sudden rush of embarrassment at the way I was dressed. I took another sip of the wine, almost instinctively covering up the more exposed bits of my anatomy as I did so. Maybe the direct approach had not been the best way to go, in this case ... but, hell ... I could still do with a shag ... and there weren't a lot of other candidates, just at present. 
I took a longer sip of wine, concentrated on what Xav was saying again.
--- ---- ---- --- ----- ----- ---
I continued to expound on my theme, slowly becoming aware that I was descending into generalisations and probably statements of the blindingly bloody obvious, while Zara continued to listen quietly. I noticed that she'd closed in on herself ... her left arm was wrapped around her breasts, again ... but was still looking at me in a rather friendlier manner than I'd experienced before. I felt grateful for that ... aware of how much I'd missed human company since I'd been here ... and a slight regret that she was no longer flashing her physical assets quite so blatantly. I wondered what that had been about ... if she'd simply wanted to provoke me, well, it had been an initial success, but the follow through had been all wrong. Maybe she just liked dressing like that ... and why not, it wasn't like she had anything to be ashamed of – quite the opposite, I thought – but then whenever I'd come across her around the place she'd always been at least slightly more conventionally dressed ... kimonos seemed to be a big part of her wardrobe ...
Ah, well, I thought ... another time. After I finally ground myself into silence, we sat companionably for a while and I realised that this was not a situation I wanted to end immediately. Instead, I suggested that we might get something to eat ... and invited her back to my living space, where the AI would provide whatever we wanted. She looked a little surprised at this but smiled, nodded, and accepted. Then she reddened slightly ... and wondered aloud if she should return to her own area to change before hand.
"I don't see why," I said, "You're free to wear what you like, obviously ... so unless you're uncomfortable ... or cold ... you could just stay the way you are?"
--- ---- ---- --- ----- ----- ---
So now I'm sitting in Xav's private space and – ye gods - I've brought up the fact that I'm completely nude except for what amounts to a negligee. I mean, he can hardly fail to have noticed – all too obviously has noticed – but now its there in the open, a reasonable topic for discussion. 'Do you always dress like an adolescent boy's fantasy or was it just a wardrobe malfunction?' or something ... and I could hardly say now that I'd been intending to simply force myself on him, even drugging the wine, if necessary – the Wisdom had some pretty potent aphrodisiacs around and I'd stashed a few away in the past, just on the off chance that they'd come in handy. But no ... that would not be good to have to admit, not now that I was beginning to feel actually fond of the man, wondering if this situation could develop in more conventional ways.
Actually, Xav didn't make an issue of it and I found myself relaxing, lying back on one of the couches and no longer trying to conceal anything while he bustled around sorting out tapas and more wine, eventually returning to sit opposite me, gaze taking in the display as he handed me a glass, sat down opposite me. It was definitely odd, I thought, nibbling on some goats cheese and watching him watching me: Here I was, practically naked and being obviously appraised ... and I still didn't remotely feel like a piece of meat on a slab. I wondered how he did that, not sure whether to be amused or exasperated by the quiet self assurance I could see in his eyes. I decided to take the initiative, sitting up and reaching forward to pick up a bowl of chilli fried potatoes, swinging my breasts at him as I did so, the chemise rucking up above my hips as I moved forward on the couch.
I didn't even get to begin to use the witty 'come hither' line I'd been contemplating, sudden revelation striking me as I saw him automatically move backwards as I leant towards him. Jesus wept, I thought ... what I'd taken as self assurance bordering on arrogance was nothing of the sort ... the guy was frightened, I realised ... and not frightened of me, either ... he was frightened of himself. What the fuck was going on here?
--- ---- ---- --- ----- ----- ---
Zara leant towards me, her breasts swaying beneath the not quite clothing she was wearing and I found myself inadvertently recoiling ... even as she simply picked up a bowl of the tapas and leaned back again ... whatever she had been about to say remaining unsaid as she looked at me strangely.
For a moment, I wondered if she'd picked up on my involuntary reaction ... whether she might actually have found it insulting or off-putting ... then decided that her sudden silence must have been coincidence. Nothing I'd seen of Zara suggested any great insight into the feelings of others and I knew I was good at keeping my emotions to myself ... just as I knew the dangers in letting them show. God knows, I'd had enough experience to know that calm detachment was the only way to be when it came to dealing with other people and consequently years of practice in maintaining a distance. So people thought I was odd, a cold fish, possibly borderline autistic ... but then I was a Reader in Biophysics, for gods' sake, a couple of years away from a professorship, if I stopped annoying people ... no-one expected us to be normal. 
And yet, and yet ... I was bothered by the nagging thought that I was, after all, sitting alone with a very attractive woman, dressed in what had clearly been designed as an erotic costume – whatever her reasons for choosing to wear it – and I had just recoiled when she'd simply leaned towards me. I realised that I didn't want to hurt or upset her, possibly even if to avoid doing so involved risking hurting myself. Maybe I'd been away from the lab too long, I thought – deprived of all those petty interactions with brain dead administrators and clueless students that normally comprised my social life, perhaps I'd developed an unhealthy appetite for human company on any level.
Or maybe I just liked her, found her attractive, all the things that happen between adult men and adult women ... or between some men and some women, anyway. Somehow the between bit had always proved elusive to me ... in that the people I had been attracted to had usually not been attracted to me. Except, I thought, people like Yvonne ... Yvonne and a few others ... and, oh, yes ... hadn't they all proved to be life enhancing experiences in the end.
On which cheery note, my thoughts were interrupted by Zara asking me if I was actually OK – concern evident in her voice – and then ... turned my world ever so slightly on its head.
--- ---- ---- --- ----- ----- ---
I began to get worried that the situation was getting a bit out of hand as Xav seemed to fold in on himself, that highly intellectual brain clearly running away down paths of its own, now apparently quite oblivious to my very presence. I contemplated checking with the AI what was going on – I was fairly sure it couldn't actually read minds but its physiological audits could come damn' close – or simply belatedly accessing Xav's history, seeing if there was anything in his past ... some trauma, perhaps ... that might explain whatever was happening, quite why the guy was reacting so ... strangely. Then I thought that that wouldn't really be fair – wondering why I suddenly thought that was a consideration – and deciding to deal with this human to human. Which is to say, by asking.him what the hell was going on ...
So. Deep breath, pause for effect, all that stuff, then:
"Xav, can I ask you a personal question? Do you have a problem with women?" He got that rabbit-in-the-headlights look, so I went quickly on. "I mean, you're obviously not gay – or, at least, I don't think you are – and I know you find me attractive ... or you did when we first met, anyway" ... I hoped he wouldn't ask just how I knew that, but no, he still wasn't speech-capable, for the moment ... "but since then you've basically ignored me. Even today ... I mean, come on, I'm sitting here wearing pretty much nothing, and while that might have been a mistake – I guess I should have known that if you wanted to talk to me at all it would be about something important – I'm still making a pretty obvious offer here ... and yet you flinch every time I come near you. So is it something I should know about? Something about me that you have a problem with? Or are you saving for yourself for our new arrival? From the archives it doesn't look like you were too close, but ..."
I left it at that, looking at him pointedly, then thought better of it and added, "Just for the record, since I've gone this far, I happen to really like you ... even if I did think you were a bit of a prick up until about an hour ago ... and, well, I'd like to get it together with you." He looked confused, poor thing, so I spelt it out, "As in, you know, getting together on a physical level – conjoining the old squidgy bits and all that – and try for the meeting of minds after that." 
"Sorry," I finished, "but I've always been a direct sort of girl. I find it saves a lot of time and effort."
--- ---- ---- --- ----- ----- ---
I had no idea what to say. Mind complete blank. No, mind filled with much confused and contradictory gibberish ... thoughts orbiting around a chaotic attractor which gradually reveled itself to be a single idea: Pretty much everything I'd thought about Zara since I first met her had been wrong ... and I didn't like being wrong.
I was still self aware enough to realise that I wasn't too keen on sitting like an idiot, either, blinking foolishly and with my mouth hanging open. So I put a heroic effort into making some sort of reply, something along the lines of 'oh ... that's very interesting ...' or similar. Which was when the Wisdom decided to interrupt.
"Hi people ... just to let you know, I think our guest is coming out of her transformative coma and I think we need one of you to be around to explain where she is and what's going on. Anytime about now should be fine."
Zara pretty much exploded, jumping from the couch she'd been sitting on and screaming at the top of her voice, "Oh for fuck's SAKE!!! Can't you put the bastard back in stasis for an hour or so? This is important!"
"I am sorry if this is an inconvenient time. However, my best predictions indicate that our guest is already semi-aware of her surrounding and thus any further delay in her reorientation is contraindicated by the high possibility of negative consequences, up to and including fatally compromising her future ability to contribute to the tasks in hand."
The cold, emotionless, artificial voice paused for a second.
"Which means, no, it can't wait. I expect one of you will wish to proceed to the Recovery Area as soon as possible."
And that was that ... negotiation was clearly not an option. I looked at Zara as she looked at me. "We'll both go," I said, "if that's OK with you, and then ... we'll continue the conversation." I paused. "Yes, I think I would like to continue the conversation. But now lets get going." Adding, for the benefit of the AI, "And I'm sure a gown of some sort will be available when we get there ... just so we don't give the wrong impression ..." She smirked, slightly, and ... for some reason ... I put my arm round her as we headed for the lifts ... together.
--- ---- ---- --- ----- ----- ---
I hate it when the Wisdom gets all authoritarian but I'm not stupid so I know just who's in control around here ... just where the balance of power lies, so to speak. So the machine says jump, I jump ... in this case up from a couch and into a room full of medical machinery – it was all part of the Wisdom on some level, I knew – and a comatose woman. I could see Xav take a bit of a step back as he saw her, presumably not having realised that the virtually moribund crone who had arrived would be transformed back to something more like a woman in her prime. Even I could see that Yvonne had been – was again – a bit of a beauty. Scanning the data feeds as we waited for something to happen I noted, too, exceptional intelligence, very high levels of physical and mental co-ordination, almost off the scale reaction times ... this woman could have been a top level athlete, an intellectual, pretty much anything – or everything – that she could have wished. Yet she ended up a junky. And even now the Machine wasn't too sure about her future prospects – couldn't be if Xav and I were actually required here.
"AI," I said, "Quite what is the problem here? What's the worst case scenario ... and why do you need us around to assist?" It took some time to get a reply, which delay itself caused Xav and I to exchange a significant look.
"Our subject is unusually fragile. Her history of personal trauma has led to her developing many neural pathways and cognitive structures which are unhelpful but which are too deeply rooted in the person she is now to remove or reconfigure completely. Therefore, at best she will continue to have significant "anger management issues" and a degree of mental instability that would normally preclude her recruitment to the team. At worst, a poor induction into her new life could result in something approaching psychopathy – not necessarily involving violence but certainly preventing her from working constructively with either you or me – or alternatively a catatonic collapse from which it is unlikely she would emerge. In either of these cases, of course, she would no longer be useful to us ... and, of course, be impossible to return to your planet."
"Which, to clarify for Xav's sake, means basically that we either get this right or she's ... well ... toast, really?"
I could see Xav looking at me in horror and wondered again what his feelings towards the woman were now. That the AI answered with a simple "Yes" did not appear to reassure him overly much. Great, I thought, asking aloud, "Don't suppose you'd care to give us any hints, here? You know, like what we should be doing or anything?"
It didn't reply. It doesn't, sometimes ... mainly when its playing silly buggers.
--- ---- ---- --- ----- ----- ---
OK, I thought ... so we have a problem and our usually helpful godlike technology has decided to go all mysterious on us. So ... either this is some sort of joke – and the AI had never struck me as having any very obvious sense of humour – or this was something that it believed we could do. Unless, of course, it genuinely hadn't a clue about the best course of action itself ... and we therefore represented the least worst option ... but I didn't want to think about that, just at the moment. Instead, I turned to Zara, said, "Well, well. It appears we're on our own ... and bright ideas would be very much appreciated should you have any you're willing to share?" I paused while she shook her head, moving over to the collection of machinery and looking down at the woman at its centre. "No, nor me ... although it occurs to me that the one thing we have that the Wisdom doesn't is that we're human ... and it may just be that what Yvonne needs at this moment is, simply, humanity." So, hardly the greatest insight of my life but Zara looked at me and nodded, lightly stroking Yvonne's hair as she did so. The body moved, made a sort of mewling sound. For some reason I was reminded of a new born kitten ... the way they react to touch while they're still blind. I wondered just how 'semi aware' Yvonne was ... how much time we had.
Zara motioned me over. "I wonder if she might not also appreciate a familiar face, assuming that she'll remember you?", she said – I nodded – "so maybe you should come over here, do the tender greeting bit while I try and get something useful from the data ... like just when she's likely to come round?"
Well, great minds think alike, I thought, as I came to stand beside her, giving her a brief hug as she turned away, obviously deep into the information feed already. Before me, Yvonne looked more like she was simply asleep than she had done even a few minutes ago. Involuntarily, my mind flicked back through the many other occasions when I'd watched her wake, the memories bitter sweet in the circumstances. I began to stroke her hair, too, settling myself down on a convenient box of machinery and half watching Zara as she frantically scanned the available information.
If the Wisdom didn't have a sense of humour, I thought, the choice of an institutional woolen dressing gown as a "robe" was a very odd one ...
--- ---- ---- --- ----- ----- ---
I did get one thing from the physioleads before Yvonne finally woke, which was that the AI had helpfully introduced quite a lot of tranquillising agents into the woman's bloodstream ... which seemed to indicate a degree of caution on its part. For my part, I hoped that said tranx would be merely calming and not as dis-inhibiting as their earthly relations. That anger management stuff was still very much on my mind.
Which, in fact, was probably for the best. Oh, it went well enough at first ... her eyes flicked open quite suddenly and almost instantly focused on Xav. There was a moment of confusion and then she laughed, hoarsely, and greeted him as "Dr Hippy!" – file that one away for future use, I thought – then began to look around her, curiously. I realised that this was a woman quite used to coming round in strange places and with no memory of how she got there. Clearly she assumed that she was in a hospital – an earth-side hospital, obviously – and said as much to Xav, who shook his head and had just started to explain when she spotted me. I seemed not to be good news, in her eyes, as she looked suspiciously at me, then loudly told me to fuck off.
This seemed to confuse Xav a bit – well, he was trying to think of a nice way to explain that she'd been kidnapped by aliens and was about to be put to work ... or possibly rendered down to her constituent atoms, if it came to that ... so probably wasn't considering all the options. I began to see the problem – this ridiculous thing the Wisdom had provided did look a bit like a hospital issue gown ... so maybe she thought I was another patient, just wandered in for a look?
Seemed that I was right, as Xav looked, startled, back to me, then tried to explain that I was a colleague ... which didn't go down well as, in fact, it seemed to occur to Yvonne that maybe Xav was also a patient ... or something. Maybe she just had bad memories of hospitals. In any case, she made an obvious decision to discharge herself there and then, and sort of hauled herself out of the cot-thing she'd been lying in – I wondered if / when she'd notice that she was quite a lot more capable of doing so than she had been for years in her past life – and said something really quite rude to Xav, pushing past him as she did so.
I noticed Xav give a sort of resigned shrug – OK, so he was used to this sort of behaviour from her, I guessed – and then thought I ought to do something constructive ... if only to stop us having to chase the poor woman around the whole complex – maybe ultimately shoot her with a tranquilliser dart, throw a big net over her, whatever it took. So I stepped in front of her, made with the consoling tones and calming body language ...
And she hit me. Well, she tried to ... would have hurt, too ... a roundhouse swing intended to do significant damage to my nose and/or lower jaw if it had connected. Luckily, I'd worked with the Wisdom on this sort of thing ... had my own reaction speeds considerably boosted, ju jitsu techniques hard wired into my brain, other useful stuff ... so instead, I simply grabbed her arm as it passed, swung slightly on the balls of my feet and ended up pinning her to the floor, getting spat at for my troubles. I decided that this was probably not the outcome we'd been hoping for.
--- ---- ---- --- ----- ----- ---
It took me some time to catch up with what had just happened but, well, basically, Yvonne went ape-shit, charged Zara, took a swing and ended up on the floor, pinned there in what looked like quite a painful – if professional – hold. Despite myself, I was quite impressed – I'd never seen Yvonne react like that before ... though she'd certainly clocked a few policemen, paramedics and such like in her time ... and I certainly didn't think Zara could react so quickly and efficiently. I also had to admit that I quite liked the fact that Yvonne, being restrained, now had little choice but to listen to my spiel ... and that Zara's unfortunate gown had fallen open, giving me a fine view of her breasts heaving beneath the negligee as she calmed herself down after her brief exertion.
I carefully positioned myself where I could take advantage of the view – a choice of position which did not go unnoticed, given the grin Z gave me – and turned my attention back to our guest. This time she got the brutal version – sod the finesse, just a bald statement of facts, not even suggesting that any choice was involved – with added emphasis on the idea that any future attempt to hurt Zara or me would result in a lot of pain for her ... at the very least. Zara helpfully reinforced the lecture at relevant points by shifting her weight in ways that looked at the very least uncomfortable for my audience. Team work, I thought ... its great what you can achieve when you work together.
At the end of it all, Yvonne was looking a bit subdued, so I motioned Zara to move away, which she did with extreme caution, I noticed, simultaneously getting rid of the dressing gown – maybe in case it got in the way if she needed to get physical again? - and I helped Yvonne to her feet. "I think its probably for the best if you go away somewhere quiet and think about stuff for a while", I said, "Then you can tell us later if you're willing to co-operate ... or not."
She looked defiant for a second or two, then her face fell and she nodded, pulling herself together enough to mutter something about how she'd need some heroin pretty soon if we wanted her to be capable of pretty much anything.
"Actually," I said, "you won't. In fact, we've already dealt with all the withdrawal shit and, more to the point, even if we did give you the bloody stuff it wouldn't have any effect. Those particular receptors in your brain are no longer functional ... and won't be coming back. Sorry."
You might think she'd have been pleased to hear that, opiates having pretty much ruined her life, but actually that was the only time that I felt a moment of fear – Zara felt it, too, dropping into a crouch behind her – but then the tension passed and she let me lead her away, out to the suite of rooms we'd allocated to her. And into which I locked her, for the moment.
--- ---- ---- --- ----- ----- ---
I didn't follow Xav as he led her away, recognising defeat when I saw it in her eyes, but simply let myself slump down on the floor and began to force myself to calm down. I kind of knew that we'd failed, that whatever the AI had been hoping for it certainly wasn't that. At the moment, though, I couldn't find it in myself to care. I wanted a drink, I decided, but not on my own. So instead of simply ordering something there and then, I concentrated on my breathing, relaxing and waiting for Xav to get back.
Which didn't take long, actually, but he looked profoundly depressed as he came back into the room. I sympathised, not feeling particularly great about the situation myself, and floated the concept of drowning our sorrows in some form of alcoholic beverage. He smiled at that – I suspect the idea had occurred to him independently – and simply beckoned for me to lead the way. So I took him back to 'my' bit of the complex.
--- ---- ---- --- ----- ----- ---
Zara's living space looked a little less like a bordello than I'd somehow imagined it would. In fact it was surprisingly tasteful and even restrained. I took a seat on a convenient couch and watched as she disappeared into another room, returning a moment or two later carrying a bottle of wine and some glasses. She's also removed the negligee thing, replacing it with a wrap of no less transparent black chiffon. I smiled appreciatively, no longer concerned about being seen to be looking at her body. She sat down beside me, poured me a glass of wine, rested her head against my shoulder. "Still want to continue the conversation?" she asked, quietly.
"Actually," I said, almost draining the wine in one go, "I'm not sure that I do, at this point. I think I have a lot of thinking to do before I'm capable of continuing the conversation, as it happens. What I think I'd like at this moment – aside from some more wine, if that's OK – is to hear something about you ... I realise that everything I presumed was wrong ... so what's the reality?"
She told me. How she got the scars on her face and hands – and other places, she said, since removed by the Wisdom – about her father ... when she was a child ... his ... well ... It was pretty sick and I held her very close as she was telling me, her voice almost inaudible as she relived the horror. And then, a life spent trying to find herself, to forget him, cutting and burning herself, abusing any drug she could get hold of, harming herself in less obvious ways ....
I felt awful ... bereft ... desperate. How could I respond to this, empathise ... answer? I started to say something ... anything, really ... just wanting to put the pain back in its box ... but Zara cut me off.
"Thing you ought to remember, Xav, is that all that shit happened – literally – on another planet. Here, I am – we are – masters of our own little universe. I know where the arsehole – sorry, my beloved father – is and I know that his life has been, courtesy of the AI, inconvenienced in many ways." She paused to think, sipping her wine. "For instance, fuck head may be the only person to contract both oral and genital herpes and crabs without ever going near another human being, sexually speaking – and I know he hasn't been doing anything sexual, trust me on that one – and, well, its all justified, serves the bastard right, from my point of view ... OK?"
Which was hard to argue with ... she was, almost uniquely, amongst the myriads of people who had endured similar abuse, in a position to exact retribution and I knew I had no right to gainsay her decision. If nothing else I had no idea how I would have responded if I had had to go through what she had. So I hugged her to me, again, as it dawned on me that it was the very strength that she had derived from surviving the experience that I had first misinterpreted as selfishness ... and now found myself admiring.
--- ---- ---- --- ----- ----- ---
Xav heard me out and, for a change, I felt that he was actually hearing what I was saying ... understanding as much as anyone who hadn't lived through it all possibly could. Not only that, but he did not seem to be judging me ... which the few people I'd told in the past nearly always did, in my experience, as if they were somehow trying to attribute blame to me ... and ... he seemed to be much more comfortable with being close to me, physically. I did wonder about the earlier problem – the conversation that we had still to have – but for the moment I was quite content to let things just happen. I slid my fingers under his t-shirt, rested my hands on his midriff, feeling the muscles, the warmth.
Xav's arm was still round my shoulder but he started to stroke my upper arm as I breathed into his neck, letting out a little sigh of contentment as I felt his hand move round and gently cup my breast. I slid my hand down, too, over the combat trousers he'd taken to wearing around the place and feeling the hardness through the material. My, how things change, I thought, as my hand found the buckle of his belt, started to open things up a bit ....
--- ---- ---- --- ----- ----- ---
In retrospect, I'm not sure how I ended up making love to Zara that first time.
I was enjoying the closeness to her, sure, enjoying the fact that she seemed to feel safe with me, giving her – and me – time to come to terms with some of the things she'd just told me. But then she'd started to stroke my stomach under my t-shirt, I'd found my hand cupping a breast, gently playing with the nipple and then she was taking my trousers off, then the rest of my clothes ... all matter of factly, efficiently ... and all the while looking me in the eye with a knowing smile.
She never did take the chiffon gown, off, just stood up in front of me, let it fall loose and then moved over me, sitting down, still facing me, with her legs astride mine and comfortably, naturally guided me inside her. It was not a passionate fuck ... more an exercise in mutual consolation ... but it was warm, close and ... intense, after a while, as she found the angle to get the necessary friction on her clitoris, moving to a rhythm of her own and ... arrived where she needed to be. After which she sort of collapsed against me, giving me a long hug and gently falling into a light sleep on top of me.
I hugged her back, enjoying her enjoyment of the moment.
--- ---- ---- --- ----- ----- ---
For once, I fell asleep first, despite the fact that I knew Xav hadn't got anywhere near orgasm ... and somehow I knew it didn't matter. We would have sex again, I hoped frequently, and there would be more than enough time to try all the athletic stuff. For the moment, it was enough to have cemented our new understanding – our friendship – with an age old act of intimacy. It hadn't really been about sex at all, I thought, even as I lay in his arms, the black chiffon now draped over both of us. I thought drowsily how good his long, thin body looked through the almost transparent material and kissed him gently. He kissed me back and I was wondering whether this might not be a good time to ... you know ... get athletic ... when the Wisdom decided to talk to us, at last.
"I hope this isn't another inconvenient moment, but I've just finished the assay on our latest recruit and I think you might like to know that your earlier intervention was entirely successful. In fact, given her current reactions, I would say that there is a greater than 95% chance that she will adapt to the work she will need to do with only the minimum of further orientation. So congratulations. For once, I really couldn't have done it without you."
OK, I thought ... that just had to be irony. And no way did it not know what was going on, the prying bastard. I glanced at Xav – hardly difficult, given that I was lying on top of him – and saw in his grim smile a similar recognition. He spoke first, echoing my thoughts almost exactly.
"Any chance of you explaining any of that, oh mighty machine?", he said, not even attempting to disguise the anger in his voice. "As far as I recall, our new guest reacted rather badly to a prop that you provided, after which Zara here had to very efficiently deck her and I had to basically threaten her into submission ... before locking her up for the night like a prisoner. Not what you'd call a particularly well handled introduction to her new life, really ... or was it?"
I'd never heard anyone address the AI in that sort of tone before and for a moment I was genuinely scared about how it might react. Then the logic of Xav's thinking caught up with me and I saw that we'd been set up ... that this was how it was always supposed to pan out. Surprisingly, the Wisdom didn't even attempt to deny it.
"Yvonne is a complex character how has many talents but also has many, many vulnerabilities. I need to maximise her usefulness, given the scale of the task we have before us, and that required – and in these circumstances the ends really do justify the means – ensuring that she is psychologically comfortable in her role ... that she truly understands ... and accepts ... her position. Specifically, she needed to be shown very quickly that her role is subordinate, that the two of you – her fellow humans – are willing and able to control her. This may sound strange to both of you, but this is actually a safe place, from her own individual point of view, for Yvonne to find herself in. Which is why I set up that little charade. Believe me, simply showing her what I could do would not have had anything like the same effect."
Well, I thought, verily we are but pawns. I saw Xav start to say something but somehow we both knew that the conversation was over ... that we'd been given the information the machine thought we needed ... and now it was up to us.
--- ---- ---- --- ----- ----- ---
I looked at Zara, Zara looked at me. I wondered, aloud, what the fuck that had all been about.
Zara looked thoughtful, said, "I don't know ... but ... you know how some people are naturally submissive, seek out ways of avoiding having to take decisions, actively defer to others ... was Yvonne that way inclined at all, when you knew her? I mean, not sexually, necessarily ... but there are theories around about chronic drug abuse being some sort of psychological abnegation of responsibility, so ..."
"Actually," I said, "you may not be entirely out of place with the sexual angle. There were times ... when we were together ... when she sort of half hinted that she might like being restrained, tied up, you know ... dominated ... I never took her up on it because, well, its not my scene ... as you may have gathered ... but maybe that needs to be taken into consideration. A way of maintaining control if you like, working with her subconscious psychology to keep her on board."
Zara looked at me pointedly, and half shuddered to herself. "Do you think that's what it meant by the 'minimum of further orientation' ? That we're supposed to get into some weird S&M game with her?"
"I hope not", I replied, "because I really don't think I could pull it off, long term, but it is a genuine possibility. Sex is a pretty important bit of the human psyche after all ... and therefore a pretty powerful lever. So ... yeah, maybe."
This time Zara looked slightly distracted, and, if possible, even more thoughtful. "I think you might be right", she said, "or at least I think it might be worth a go." She paused, for some time, not looking at me at all.
"I think I should probably do the honours tomorrow morning, then," she said, eventually, "and I'll try and give it a go, get into a dominant role with the woman. Strictly for the team, of course."
And then we both recognised the pun and began laughing as we locked into an embrace. Strictly for the team, indeed ...

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