Disclaimer: this is a work of fiction. It is a draft; there are mistakes, many misspellings and sometimes long periods of no updates. copyright: ion fyr 2025
She didn’t know how psuedo-Pool had gotten to the club, and had never seen Luc’s private rooms before. It was apparent, though, when they arrived, that her Mr Maron lived like a princeling in his way.
When they first arrived, Etelka assumed that they would take the elevator to the top floor, just like they had when she had been here before, what seems like ages ago. Instead, she observed Luc push his thumb against the brushed steel panel which replaced the operator in this time period. There was no perceptible marking on the metal (perhaps only a smeared print.) She wathced his eyes as he stared into space for a moment and then they started to move…downward.
She had expected the jolt of accelaration upward, but the elevator was clearly moving downward. It did not move far.
According to her memory, the journey upward consisted of a quick acceleration and equal deceleration, covering barely 6 or 7 seconds. This was abrupt by comparison.
The door slid open, and as if summoned by Luc, pseudo-Pool was waiting for them wearing a dumb smile and some sort of one-piece uniform that dangled even from his whole arm. It bunched up around his ankles with his own Pool-shoes sticking out of the mess.
“Welcome, my friends in adventure,” he said.
Etelka glanced at Luc, looking for guidance.
Luc simply ignored pseudo-Pool and walked past him into the parlor. Was parlor even the right word?
Tilting his head back slightly over his left shoulder, Luc spoke, “welcome to Tes.”
“Mr Maron had his men bring me here and gave me this to replace my ditto suit. As you remember it was shredded on the right arm and covered in the unfortunate remains of Captain Gordon.”
“Yes, Pool, I remember.” She looked at the unflattering sack. “This will do for now.”
She walked past him as well, feeling at the same time that she was being rude to the undeserving man…was he a man. She had seen the mechanical parts in his arm. She tried to swallow the shame, but Etelka felt gut-wrenched, as if an iron had slipped and fallen into the works, not just gumming it up, but shattering the gears that made her function.
Luc had flopped into an immodest couch. What looked like blue leather embraced him as he leaned back. While she wasn’t looking he had torn off his shirt. She blushed at her own thoughts on that image.
His arms spread out across the back of the couch, gold chains tangled in his black forest of chesthair, exuding his musk…
“Mr Maron…I’m sorry, Luc, thank you for looking after our friend, the Constable. Where are we? I thought we were going to your apartments near…your ‘club'”.
“This is it. I mean these are some of them. We’re under it this time.”
“I suspected,” added Pool, still standing as if he needed an invitation to sit or some other instruction.
“It’s safer here.”
“What of Constable Pool, by the way?”
“Yes, if I may add. What of me?”
“That is a good question, Mr Pool,” said Luc. He looked from Etelka to Pool’s simulacrum.
“Mr Pool has earned my trust for the moment. I don’t have the mistrust of synthetics that some do…even if he’s not the original…he seems like the one that I knew before. Either he was like this all along, which brings up many different questions, or, he is a copy.”
“If you can’t tell, does it matter?” Luc said before projecting himself upwards and out our the couch. “I will be showering. Baroness, you have the first room on the right. Mr Pool has the second. Through the kitchen and around the corner.” He nodded at a door to the right of the couch, while he went through a different one behind the couch. The pocket doors automatically slid into the recesses within the walls.
It was nearly silent until Pool spoke: “Ma’am, I will retire until morning tea. I hope to see you then?” He sounded like a wounded puppy.
If you cannot tell, does it matter? Etelka considered that idea. She seemed to remember something like that said before somewhere.
Ion Fyr 