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
Etelka was just climbing out of the bath, luxury in the extreme, when she heard the knock at the door. She knew it was Luc–not even from the force and confidence of the knock–but, the only other person there was Pool, or his approximation, and he would never knock at her door, unless it was the direst emergency.
Etelka brushed the blue strands of her hair away from her shoulder, where they clung like fine, threadlike tentacles, but neglected for a time, the tentacle tracing her eye socket and cheekbone, tracing a line down her right jaw, taking in the view or the lobe of her ear, before driving a switch-back down her albinian marble neck, and then up and over her collar bone, still on the right side.
Since their journey began, Etelka’s hair had grown out a bit, showing a light brown root-stock against her whiter than white scalp. Even the outer blue had faded from aquamarine to a kind of prussian blue at the frontier.
“Yes,” she responded.
“Me,” Luc stated, caveman-like.
“I’m just out of the bath…,”
He came in anyway.
Etelka, feigned surprise–as they did in fantasy pulp pennybooks. She had managed to get her shift over her body, though it was clinging to her in morally incorrect places.
“Mr Maron!” she exclaimed, with fake surprise and nonchalance. “How dare….”
“Nila as absorbed the rings and Pool is entirely an anthromorph, but with a human skeleton and maybe some organs and part of a brain.”
“What1? Luc….what? I’m just out of the bath!” Etelka was rattled.
“Oh, my apologies to your ancient dignity or whatever, Baroness.” Luc did a 23rd century rendition–based on cinema–of a historically inaccurate curtsey.
“That’s all wrong. Don’t be a buffoon. We have enough of those.”
Luc wasn’t sure who she meant by that.
“Start with Nila first.” Etelka had a white terry towel around her head and another wrapped around her hand and finger, drying her ears, trying to work around the pairs of hoops on each one.
“Our friend…you know the rings…?”
Why did he pause? “Yes…the rings.. “
“Hosh…the doctor…says they are mixed with her now… “
“What do you mean mixed?” Etelka was piqued and had no idea what he was saying.
Luc thought for a moment. “How to explain…in our…time…when we implant circuitry in the flesh, it comes with a single injection of microparasites, this is not the medical term…it is not my area…”
“And?” she encouraged him to continue.
“these artifical microbes flow around the blood and remove the plastics and metals and other things that bleed off, you know like skin-flakes when it is dry…So these bots live in the blood for years and remove that stuff, what can poison us after a while, from the implants….”
She knew at least in a rough framing, the science of germ-theory.
“What of it, Mr Maron?” The situation had changed. She, being almost naked before this gorgeous man, had stopped thinking at all about her modesty. Luc was the one that was flustered. She had never seen him red in the face before, and he had been prancing about her properties across time and space for years wearing nothing but a kilt or pantalinos and bare sandals.
Now Etelka sat in Luc’s palace cellar–she imagined a wine cellar beyond the wall behind the lavatory–wondering what the man was talking about…having trouble focusing.
Think Nila, she thought to herself, “no!…not Nila either…Pool.” That did it. Pseudo-Pool was not at all an inspiration for sultry thoughts.
Closing her eyes, still brushing her hair, aware of her naked shoulders, “What about our Constable?”
Luc pulled himself up. He always did this to make himself bigger. An imagined cord running up his spine, through his skull, out the oriface at the top. Like a demonic marrionette.
He closed his eyes for one and a half seconds. At first to not look at Etelka, but then, in the fraction, to compose himself.
“Nila’s body, because of existing tiny robots in her blood, has absorbed the rings…we think.”
Etelka opened her eyes under damp lashes. “What does this mean, Luc?”
“I don’t know yet. The doctor…I think they are part of her now.”
“Is she awake yet?”
“No.”
“Pool?”
“All anthromorph…aside from bits of orgainic matter, which I guess came from the original, but who knows.”
Etelka didn’t need Luc to elaborate. She imagined Mary Shelley’s patchwork beast, made of parts, Nila and Pool both.
“Mr Maron, please let me dress appropriately. Ten minutes,” she said.
Luc left her to dress.
The shift was wet and the outer that she was wearing hadn’t been cleaned in ages, and seemed to have disappeared while she was in the bath. Someone–no guesses who–had thrown some contemporary clothing on the bed. The ‘thrown’ means it wasn’t Pool; even one-handed he would have laid them out folded, despite his revultion toward the attire culturally dictated to the people of this time.
Luc.
Etelka looked at the clothing and was moderately aghast.
Ion Fyr 