Jo didn’t know what day it was, nor has he ever. Black paint on the windows did tricks on the perception of time. He was sure he hasn’t slept in a while, but that pleasant numbness in his skull was addicting, better than Purple, and his mind worked like it has never worked before.

Brilliant. He was so brilliant, and smart, and delightful. The copper pins sang all the praises in the world. Each cylinder was a maiden, freshly cleansed by fire, oiled and shining, and his diamond blade was the very finger of the Lords Below, biting into the sheen of their skin with flawless precision.

The cylinders spun on the rotary, such lovely noises, the pins effortlessly sliding into the grooves and notches and valleys and trenches, triggering a symphony of sensual ticks that went round and round on his desk. A music box without music. He was wet with joy. His heart railed like a steam engine, his crotch a swamp of itches and burns, but his hands were perfectly steady.

He did not need to look. He’s not needed to look for a long time. The workshop was lit by a single yellow bulb, enough for him to make sure the chamber pot was where he left it. Other than that, it was a distraction. His eyes were slits. His hands knew where the next groove should be, and his blade went there on its own.

The copper cylinders spun and spun, so neat, so unspoiled…but there was a mistake. A tick slightly delayed. He spun on his chair, a snarl at his lips. How dare it mess up his symphony?

The chair broke from under him. About time, really, since he weighed three times as much as when he first sat in it. Metal screamed, joiners popped, and Jo fell to the floor ass first, flailed, knocked over the chamber pot, kicked the tape box, kicked it again, and two hundred cylinders screeched to a halt.

He couldn’t get up.

He thumped, trying to get an arm under, but his hand slipped in the brown and he flopped down, heavy. Cold on his left. A jagged piece of metal stuck against his side but he couldn’t reach it, buried beneath the spill of his stomach. A thin wheeze ran from his teeth. Pain. How primitive.

The out of sync cylinders were sawblades cutting into his inner ear. Must reset. Must get up.

‘JOY!!’ He screamed. Lords below, how feeble he sounded, how utterly human. Like a gutter choked with trash. ‘JOY!!’

Silence was the response. He tapped his left forefinger and thumb together furiously, the way Maestro Cowen had shown him. Like clicking fingers. His nails took on a Green luminescence, just barely, glowing in the dark like some alchemist’s idea of fashion. What a feeble tool, a switch that barely sent a signal, and it somehow anchored Joy to him. A puppet on a single string could not dance, so why should this?

Maestros, pretending that the dead could be bought and sold. Liars.

The door banged open, and a shaft of light illuminated the love of his life. Joy was pale, so very lovely and pale, her eyes ocean blue from rim to rim, her hair a supple blonde, her figure shapely yet thin and bulging at all the right places. Weekly maintenance did wonders for the flesh, and strength too, strength enough to carry ten times its body weight.

But this was a deceptively delicate situation. It was simply too unusual. The room was cluttered beyond sense, gadgets everywhere, cylinders, tools, clothes, sheets, copper lodes, wires, spools, a rumpled bed, six workbenches, seven cabinets, a floor littered with pieces of who knew what. Too complex for a navigation routine.

Lifting a fallen man seemed an easy task at first, but Jo was not a sack of dirt to be slung over a shoulder, or a crate to be hoisted over the head. One wrong move and Joy could break him by moving too fast, too slow, grabbing at the wrong place, letting go too soon…too many traps.

He’d have to micromanage.

‘Joy, listen to me. Are you listening?’ A nod. ‘Custom routine three-seven-three, manual input.’ His fingers tapped in spasms. ‘Custom routine three-seven-three, manual input. Do you understand?’

He swore he could hear it, the soft spooling of the tape box inside Joy, where her stomach used to be. The sound was smooth as silk, quick as sand.

Another nod.

‘Forward, two inches.’

Joy shuffled forward, heels slipping on the ground. Gone was the grace of the walk routine he had agonized over for weeks; the slunk-shouldered, slack-jawed stumble of an ambler has returned. Tears rose to his eyes, and he fought the urge to look away.

‘Left, five inches.’ More shuffling. ‘Front obstacle, manual detect.’ Joy lifted up one leg with perfect balance, probed around with the foot until it struck the overturned lockbox, then stepped over it.

Jo was out of breath by the time Joy made it to him. The metal thing was really biting into his ribs now, a bruise at least. The pain made matters urgent, and urgent was never good.

‘Get rid of this, hurry up,’ he gasped, fumbling at his side. He couldn’t reach, couldn’t –

Joy tore it from under him and threw the crooked chair across the room. A blistering wind sent the cylinders jittering. It struck door and with a screech knocked it free from its hinges, then tumbled into the corridor beyond and stuck itself into a wall.

No no no. That was too vague. Must phrase more carefully, with qualifiers, quantifiers, or next it would be his ass thrown across the room. ‘Custom routine nine, quarter strength. Query…query, will you help me up?’

Her hand found his shoulder, her grip cold and gentle like a towel of ice, soft and hard at the same time. Then it grew painful. It grew so painful so quickly that Jo screamed. A sack of dirt torn open, spilling on the ground –

But then he was up. The room was water under his feet. It’s been days since he last stood, and it felt as if a boulder sat on his hips. That was not Joy’s fault. Joy did everything to perfection, the way she always did; it was he who was defeated.

‘The routine…routine...’

The cylinders spun in disharmony, pins out of alignment, tape slithering crookedly through the tape box, recording the wrongness for all eternity. Three weeks of hard work stood on the precipice, and Jo was…tired.

Standing up was exhausting. He looked for a chair, realized he had none, stumbled, lost his balance, then landed on his bed with an earth-pounding crash. Before he could catch his breath Joy’s hand was on his shoulder again. So gentle. Always so gentle to start with, but the grip strength needs fine tuning after all. Lucky it was only his shoulder.

‘Resume nominal routine,’ he gasped.

Joy froze, then put a hand on her hip. With a finger she demurely rubbed his lips from end to end. So cold, a prick of ice. So lovely. Another subroutine he had painstakingly researched, so flawlessly executed.

He was a master, no doubt about it. That little bit of playfulness went for ten thousand seeds on Floor of Twenty. It was all the rage in the great estates…but even the richest only received his poorest iterations; the best work he only kept for himself.

His heart calmed a little, and the stink of brown assaulted his pores. Lords Below, the chamber pot. ‘Joy, how many times have I told you, this is our shared space, and we must, must maintain it together, that’s the responsible thing to do. Clean this up. It stinks. Oh Lords Below it’s on my hand. Fetch water. Wash me.’

Joy turned to leave, her hips swaying at the most temptingly exact angle, her backside a most supple mountain, the gap between her legs at exactly quarter of an inch. A window for the soul, if there ever was such a thing.

Next Chapter: Chattel (7)