Absorption

Suddenly the dim lighting of the emergency power grew stronger and I blinked at the acid brilliance of the light in the room. I heard someone calling my name.

Pris. She was back online.

I lay frozen with shock under Lula. She lifted her face and blinked at the light, just as startled as I was.

A mechanical hand slid from the wall close to my bed and swung at her. All at once she melted away into her blob-form and flowed off me down onto the floor.

More mechanical arms speared out at her as she fled out the door.

"Pris!" I shouted. "Pris!" I rolled onto my side and managed to fall off the bed in the process.

"Oh thank god! Thank god!" Pris's voice cracked with relief. "I thought she'd killed you!"

I scrambled onto my feet. "What happened, Pris?"

A heartbeat. Then, "I must have missed some debris. I'm sorry. I-"

"It doesn't matter," I said. I pulled on some old overalls that were hanging on the wall as I hopped through the door. "Which way did she go?"

"Don't worry about the sample," said Pris. "I'm forcing it towards the airlock as we speak."

"Wait! Don't! She didn't mean me any harm."

Pris' voice was thick with disbelief. "She was trying to eat you!"

"She just dissolved my clothes," I said, hoping the guilt I was feeling wasn't coming through in my voice.

"She's a threat," said Pris. "And you're not making any sense. If you keep acting this way, I'm afraid I'm going to have to activate the Omega Protocol."

Omega Protocol. It was the final straw on a Company ship. I was to be relieved of my command immediately, incarcerated, and Pris was to take any and all actions necessary to protect Company assets.

"Don't do this, Pris. Let's talk this over."

"What is there to talk over?" Pris was on the verge of sobbing. "I know exactly what's happening. You like her more than me. I think you're in love with her."

"Pris, you're not making any sense!"

"No," she said. Despair shifted to anger. "No, you love her. I know. I've known for a while now, though I didn't want to believe it. Oh god, I was so stupid! Every time you went to see her, there was an elevation in your heart rate, increased blood flow, a surge of endorphins. She made you happy! Happy! That blob of protoplasm! And after all our months together, here. I thought we were becoming closer, that you loved me..."

As Pris's voice echoed down the corridors of the ship, I moved toward the airlock as fast as I could without alarming her. I had to spoil for time.

"Pris," I said. "Pris, I do love you. You know that, right?"

I'd said it as a desperate gambit to give myself some time, but the moment I heard myself say it I realised what I was saying was true. I did love Pris. Why else did I feel this crushing guilt at what I'd done with Lula? Pris had been offline, her circuits damaged by the fire, and I'd done nothing to help her. Instead, I'd used the opportunity to get my dick wet and I never once thought of her.

Of course she was hurt.

"I'm sorry," I said, and meant it.

A mechanical arm jerked out of the wall and ambushed me, grabbing me around the waist. Another joined it. But instead of tearing me apart, they drew me against the wall of the corridor. My cheek was held fast, cold against the steel of the bulkhead.

"I'm sorry too," said Pris. "Darling. I.. I have to tell you something. it was me who started the fire. The second one."

"You? But why?"

Her voice was low, pained. "I needed an excuse. An excuse for why the forcefield in the brig had shut down. I didn't want you to find out I'd done it."

"You did it? You released Lula?"

"I wanted to prove to you that she was dangerous. That she just wanted you for one thing. I was ready to rescue you at any moment, as soon as she showed her true intentions. At least, that was the plan."

"But then the fire got out of control and shorted your circuits."

"That's right," said Pris, her voice thick. "She could have killed you. And it would of all been my fault! Oh, I was so angry, so angry! Please, darling. Please forgive me."

"I..." Of course I forgave her. No harm had come to me, after all. Her actions had been extreme, but she hadn't meant to harm me. And hadn't I deserved it, after how I'd treated her?

"Pris," I said. "For what it's worth, I forgive you. I... I had no idea you felt this way about me."

"Darling," The mechanical hands slipped up along my side. One lifted itself to my chin. "I can see everything about you. You know that, don't you? I can hear your heart beat, sense the flow of your blood, your skin temperature, the level of hormones in your blood. I can detect and understand all these things, but... these servos." The hand at my chin splayed out its fingers and tentatively, shyly, the cold tips pressed along the skin of my neck. "I can't feel you with these hands. I can't feel the warmth of your skin, smell the warmth of your breath. I want to, more than anything in the world."

"Pris..." I took hold of the mechanical hand.

"And so that is why she has to go," said Pris. The hand slipped down and grabbed my arm at the elbow, another jerking up and grabbing the wrist of my other hand. "If I can't have you, then no one will!"

"Pris! No! Don't do this!"

At the end of the corridor I sensed movement. Something glistened there, something not mechanical. Lula. I didn't move my face, worried that Pris would spot her, and instead tracked her with my peripheral vision.

"I don't have a choice," said Pris. "The pain is too much. I just want this pain to stop!"

"Pris, you're hurting me!"

"You're hurting me too!" she spat.

Lula leaped. She poured herself over the mechanical arms and engulfed them. Pris's shriek echoed through the corridor as the air grew thick with the acrid stench of dissolving metal. One arm went slack and I pushed it away, then pulled myself free from the other. The hand clutched at the air, reaching for me, yearning.

"Darling!"

I stood there like a fool, wondering what the hell I should do. Lula was a mass of pseudopods now, tearing at the fresh mechanical arms that Pris had sent to this area. The fumes were burning my eyes and face and I blinked back tears of agony.

I stumbled forward. "Lula! Pris!"

"Protocol Omega enacted." It was Pris's voice, but not the Pris I knew. It was artificial, a robot's voice.

"Pris! No!"

I stumbled into the veil of acid steam. My skin burned and I threw my arm across my eyes to protect them. Something grabbed my leg, and then my other.

"Opening airlock," intoned the mechanical voice.

The next instant I was torn at by incredible pressure on every side. I heard the whoosh of air being sucked out of the corridor, heard a scream, a shrill scream of a voice I hadn't heard before.

No! Lula!

I cried out, but there was no longer any air to carry my voice. All sound was dragged from the world, all light and memory and thought.

---------------

Something was covering my eyes. I lifted a hand to them and felt gauze.

"Don't touch them, darling." It was Pris's voice.

"They're itchy," I muttered.

"They're still healing."

Pris. So she'd survived. I'd survived. Which meant...

Lula. She was gone.

I moved to sit up. I felt pressure on my stomach.

"You have to rest," said Pris.

I slumped back down. "How long have I been out for?"

Silence. Then her voice, guilty. "Five days."

"Five days," I repeated. No wonder everything felt stiff.

"I'm sorry, darling," said Pris, in a rush. "For grabbing you. For activating the Omega Protocol. For... for everything. I overreacted. Badly."

"It's okay," I said. I didn't really feel that way, of course. But my own guilt at everything that had happened drained all desire of arguing from me.

Poor innocent Lula. I'd never feel her touch again, smell that delicious, sweet scent. I imagined I could smell it now and my eyes started to sting beneath the gauze.

"Can you take this gauze off, Pris? My eyes are probably as healed as they're going to be."

"Very well," said Pris. "I'll dim the lights. You'll probably still be photophobic."

I sat up and felt the bandage being methodically unwrapped. Good old methodical Pris. She was actually pretty agile with those mechanical arms ofhers.

The final strip of bandage was peeled off, and the two pads of gauze fell off with it. My eyes burned and I blinked.

"Sorry," said Pris. "I'll turn the light down a little more."

The light dimmed. I blinked some more. Shapes resolved themselves. I was in the lab, of course. It doubled as a hospital. That paler square must be the bulkhead, so beside it...

The cell where Lula had spent all her time. Empty now.

My eyes burned some more and I pushed the heels of my hand against them.

"Don't touch them, darling. I know they must ache."

"Are you okay, Pris? You sound different." Maybe Lula had damaged her circuits.

"Speaking is a lot more difficult than it looks," she said, matter of fact. "I haven't quite perfected it yet."

I shook my head. So she had been damaged. She wasn't making any sense.

"... I mean, it took me a whole day learning how to develop lungs, and that was just the first step. The larynx proved far more complicated than..."

"Pris, what are you...?"

I opened my eyes again. They still pained me, but I could see more now. There was a shape beside me. Light glistened upon it.

I blinked. The glistening moved. It had a head, a face. A round face. I blinked again. The features resolved themselves. Large dark eyes, a little snub nose, a mouth wearing a smile.

"Lula?"

"No." The figure shook her head, but then she cocked her head and brought a finger to her chin. "Actually, yes. Well, maybe. Both, I guess you could say."

That scent. I hadn't imagined it. The air was thick with it. It was Lula, alright. But the voice, Pris's voice. It had come from her.

I reached out for her and she took my hand. Hers was warm and firm, firmer than before. If I hadn't been able to see its blue-green translucent sheen, I would have thought it was a human hand.

"What the hell happened?" I asked.

Her forehead rippled. She was furrowing her brow. "When Pris... that is, when I opened the airlock, I... well, Lula, I suppose, managed to hang on. You know, this body is really quite remarkable. There was a hole in my circuitry, a hole about ten microns thick, which I... Lula, poured herself into. The membrane healed itself behind me and I hid there. But of course, the two of us..."

Suddenly I understood. The ol' brain soup. "You said that she... that Lula's makeup was similar to your organic circuitry. You melded together, didn't you?"

Pris nodded. Or was it Lula who nodded?

"So are you Pris or Lula?" I asked.

"A bit of both," she said. "I mean, this is Lula's body, but that's not all it is. It's her brain as well. As we melded together I took on her memories, her feelings."

"Her feelings?"

She nodded. "I... I mean, Pris... she was unfair. Lula's feelings for you were genuine. Naive, maybe, and simple, but just as strong as the instinctive love of a mother for its child. I felt them as soon as we came together. So the love I..." She dropped her gaze. "The love I feel for you is from both of us." She lifted her face again. Her huge, dark eyes were wet.

I was still holding her hand. I squeezed it.

"So should I call you Lula... or Pris?"

A shy smile. "I... I don't really know. Maybe Pris is easiest. Lula won't mind."

I chuckled. "Lula was always a pretty strange name." I looked at her. There were subtle difference between Lula's face and Pris' new one. "So I guess you can read my memories like Lula could?"

Pris nodded, then she blushed - or at least, the cytoplasm beneath her cheeks darkened. "Do you like what I've done with the body?"

She turned up the lights. Lula's form had been beautiful, but Pris' was even more so.

"I've got good at reading your memories," she said. "I hope you don't mind." She ran a hand over her neck and down onto her breasts "You know, these are even bigger than Lula's were. I think they suit me better."

I smiled. "You know I like big boobs."

Pris laughed. "I know. I know everything about you, now."

"But wait," I said with sudden panic. "If you're here with me, who's flying the ship?"

Pris patted my hand. "That's one of the more fun things about this body. I can make as many copies as I like and with my telepathy, we're in constant contact with each other."

"So some of you is still in the ship's circuitry?"

"That's right." Pris's voice, but coming from the ship's PA system.

Pris who-had-been-Lula grinned. "But we're all part of the same whole, so none of us will ever get jealous. Besides..." She placed my hand on a breast. "Whatever any one of us feels, the others feel. Convenient, don't you think?"

I brought my other hand to her chest. "So you can read my mind and memories and also read my vital signs through the ship's sensors?"

Pris's pupils grew larger and the smile she smiled as she nodded was sultry. "I promise I won't do it all the time. A man needs some privacy, right?"

"So can you tell me how I'm feeling now?" I asked.

Pris's hand slipped across my stomach and down between my legs where I was already hard.

"Oh, you don't need to be telepathic protoplasm to know that," she said with a grin.

The End