![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
matrixrefugee(I know, it needs a better title... I'll think of one. This is also a chapter from the novel I was attempting to write in a month... I didn't get very far I'm afraid...)
This takes place about ten years before the action of the "Vatican Council" series. It's a little fragmentary at the beginning, but this is gonna be part of a novel based on Hal/Le Meroveque's rise from anonymity...
* * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Most male companion Mechas, particularly the lover-models, were too scandalously good-looking to have in one's family, which was why Rodolphe Seneschal, a Parisian wine-dealer, had chosen to buy a custom-designed Belladerma model for his personal secretary and man-servant. The J-501 series was ideal: the basic template was a darkly yet quietly good-looking young male in his early twenties, dark brown hair, medium brown eyes, soft-spoken, refined, intelligent and dilligent. Rodolphe opted to have his unit's height set at five feet-three inches, and had a slight layer of baby fat added to the unit's figure, to soften his looks. Call him Julien. Later, Rodolphe would give the little Mecha the surname "Cochonett", the piglet, on account of his plumpness and how delicious the little one really was. Rodolphe's tastes tended to run both ways, and so as not to give his wife Amelie cause for concern that she might not be enough for him, Rodolphe had the little one retrofitted with a simple sensual performance package, enough to allow the little one to keep his master content, and to allow Julien to flirt politely with any unattached female guests at dinner parties. At the same time, they added a classical piano-playing ability chip, so he could accompany Amelie when she sang.
A year and a half later, Rodolphe and Amelie obtained their parental license... a joyous moment for them both... but that hope soon perished when Amelie was found to be sterile. Later, she would be admitted to a hospital for a suicide attempt: she had tried overdosing on sleeping pills, but Julien had called for help before it was too late. Rodolphe sought out something, anything to divert Amelie, give her an outlet for her maternal feelings. He found a Cybertronics Darlene model up for sale at a flea market and brought her home when Amelie came home from the hospital. At first Amelie objected: did they really need one more Mecha in the household? They had Gertrude the housekeeper and Rodolphe had Julien. Yet, Darlene, in her sweet little girl way, found a passage into Amelie's heart.
But as perfect as this arrangement seemed, its perfection could not last. Rodolpje assigned several small chores to Darlene, but Amelie would not hear of it. Rodolphe accused his wife of being too lenient with their "daughter", but Amelie turned this around, accusing her husband of being too harsh with the little girl-Mecha. Soon enough, Darlene found that if she wanted something, she had only to go to Maman for it.
At the same time, an odd change started to come over Julien; he started to manifest some of Darlene's behavior: sulking if asked to do something he suddenly found "distasteful". A whiny, sulky note came into his tone of voice, something Rodolphe had never heard before.
On account of the irritations in his home, Rodolphe started staying away from home longer when he went away on business trips. Amelie accused him of spending more time working than he did with his family, which only exacerbated the rawness of his nerves.
During his time at home, Rodolphe noticed an odd change in Amelie's attitude toward Julien, whom he had started leaving at home since, in his estimation, the Mecha had become too unreliable. Before, she had simply regarded Julien as one of the house Mechas: she spoke to him only when she had an order for him and that had been infrequent. Now, Rodolphe noticed a certain air of ...familiarity between his wife and the little Mecha.
He had to find out what was going on, and thus, on his next trip, Rodolphe came home a half a day earlier than he had planned.
He entered the house late at night, when all lay still. He scanned each room, looking for evidence: an open wine bottle and two used glasses on a table beside the piano; damp towels smelling of Amelie's bath salts in the bathroom.
Then... in the bedroom, he found someone lying next to Amelie, a dark tousled head on Rodolphe's pillow, next to Amelie's red-gold head, her willowy form nestled with Julien's soft, stubby shape. She lay asleep while the Mecha lay awake.
Rodolphe grabbed Julien by the scruff of the neck, then hauled him out of bed and onto the floor. Startled, Julien let out a loud squeal of terror. Amelie awakened and started to sit up, but her gaze met Rodolphe's blazing eyes and she dropped her gaze in guilt.
On the spot, Rodolphe forbade Julien to have nothing but the most perfunctory contact with Amelie, but he might as well have told a vine not to climb up the nearest tree. He caught Julien with Amelie again, a month later, in the middle of the day.
He couldn't keep this uppity Mecha around, and the laws in Europe forebade an owner from wiping a Mecha's cube unless it was acting dangerously. All Julien had done was seduce his master's wife, or allow the mistress of the house to seduce him. And damaging a Mecha carried the same penalty as stabbing a human.
There were still some dissatisfied people in Europe who, despite all the advances the pro-Mecha rights groups had made, still hated Mechas with a passion. They were much less visible and less numerous than they had been when Rodolphe was young, but he managed to find a man, in the seedier side of Paris, who promised to put a good scare into Julien. He'll be passing a certain spot at a certain time: his rambles through the city on his days off are perfectly predictable. Follow him, then approach him and tell him he is needed at home. You know what to do next...
* * * * * * * * * * * * * *
He was just taking a walk, buying himself a new shirt to wear at the wine-tasting party that week, and he was going to find a little present for Amelie, when a tall man in a leather jacket approached him.
"Hey there, Julien," the stranger said.
"And have I had the chance to meet you before, sirrah?" Julien asked, looking up at him, trying to place the stranger's face.
"No, but I work for your boss, Rodolphe Seneschal. He sent me lookin' for you: he needs you at home right away."
"But this is my half-day, when I shop for my own small necessities," Julien objected.
"Well, it just turned into a quarter-day." The stranger took him under the arm and hustled him along the street before turning down an alleyway. Julien always took care to avoid these places: they were too dark and dirty for his preferences, and this one, with its overturned trash cans spilling out on the cracked pavement, was no exception.
"This is not the way back to my master's home," Julien said, as the alleyway came to a dead end.
"No, but we still got business with you," the stranger said, throwing Julien's back against a wall.
A door in the back wall of one of the buildings that hemmed them in opened up and two other rough-looking men emerged. One held a small wooden club in his hand, the other drew a long-bladed knife from a sheath in one of his boots. They grinned horribly as they closed in on Julien...
* * * * * * * * * * * * * *
That evening in the Seneschal household, Amelie and Darlene were distraught at Julien's disappearance. Darlene sat curled up on a window seat, watching for her friend to return. Rodolphe made a perfunctory call to the police to report their houseboy Mecha had disappeared while it was out running errands, but he himself doubted Julien would return.
"He's a Belladerma model: they're worth a lot of money, so any thug would want to swipe him and resell him to the top bidder," Rodolphe said.
"But won't Julien object to that?" Amelie said.
"He's only a machine, he's not smart enough to do that, especially if someone approaches him in a kind manner," Rodolphe said. "You know how easy it is to win his affections."
* * * * * * * * * * * * * *
He was heading home for the day, so he took a short-cut -- Halloran "Hal" McGeever, photo journalist for Le Monde, heading back to assume his alter-ego, Henri Armand de Meroveque, the next of the Merovingians... The last sort of person you'd expect to find traversing Paris's web of alleyways, but back alleys -- particularly ones that had recently become crime scenes -- were his journalistic specialty.
Out of the corner of his eye, he spotted something lying on the pavement: a body lying prone on the muddy ground, fine clothes dishevelled, probably some Parisian playboy who'd fallen afoul with a group of thugs.
Hal turned toward the body, adjusting the focus on his camera and crouching closer to get the right shot.
But just then, the injured youth sat up, wobbling as if he might fall over and turned his face to Hal's.
The young man was a Mecha, the derma torn from the right side of his face and the eye smashed on that side, the jaw hanging slack from the metal understructures. Someone had slashed much of the derma on his torso as well, leaving the torso housing and the lower chip boards exposed.
The Mecha's one good eye rolled up in fear and it cowered back from Hal. It tried to say something, but its voice box must have been damaged in the attack.
"Hey... hey... easy there now, fella, easy," Hal said, putting down his camera. "It's okay: I'm not gonna hurt you, little fella." He approached it slowly, carefully. The Mecha flinched back, but its fearful gaze seemed to soften a little. It wasn't much taller than he was, and from what Hal could tell, it was a male, a custom job, and quite probably a Belladerma, from the look of things: it wasn't industry standard to make male Mechas that short or give them the chubby figure they'd given this little guy.
"Hey, I'm here to help you: It might take a little doing, but I can fix you," Hal said, kneeling in front of the little Mecha. The stray studied his face with its -- his undamaged eye, clearly incredulous, but it did not try to pull away from him.
Hal cupped the Mecha's undamaged cheek in one hand. The Mecha closed its undamaged eye and leaned into the touch. "You liked that? Well then... you take it easy: I'm going to get you out of here and fix you up."
He reached behind the Mecha's left ear, finding the cube wait switch, then laid the Mecha on his back on the ground before switching him off. Once the Mecha lay quiet, Hal reached into his coat for his cellphone, calling for the Twins to meet him...
* * * * * * * * * * * * * *
"Ugh... the poor little thing," Marilyn said, when Hal had got the Mecha home and had it -- him laid out on the large work table in his workshop. "Do you have any idea what happened to him?"
"Other than someone took a crowbar or a baseball bat to his eye and slashed him up... I'll have to scan his cube and find out who did it," Hal said. "He's a custom job, too... that'll make it a *lot* of fun trying to put him back together."
"But you can do it, can you?" Marilyn asked, averting her eyes.
"I'll give it my best," Hal said, rolling up his sleeves and reaching for a cube scanner.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * *
The hardest part about repairing a custom unit was getting the parts for it. Hal could weld the cracks in the torso and the cranial housings, but finding the silicon to repair the derma was a bit of a challenge. For one thing, the derma had a backing layer of simulated baby fat made from foam silicon. For another thing, to add to this little guy's child-like roly-poly figure, they had added water sacs under the skin to support the especially pudgy spots: the insides of his thighs, his belly and on his chest. Whoever had attacked the little one had slashed them clean open with a sharp knife. Hal had had to bring the little Mecha down to the Belladerma studio in Rome to have these parts replaced. But slowly, Julien started to look more like a Mecha and less like a scrapheap
But one thing Hal could do easily was scan Julien's cube. What he found there angered him so much, he burned some of the visual scans onto disks and sent them to the police. They had been looking for Julien and the case had started to run cold, but this was exactly the lead they needed.
When the police called Rodolphe Seneschal, telling them they had found Julien, he immediately went to the precinct to see if he could get Julien back. But the police had something else to inform him about.
When he arrived, two detectives confronted him with still photos taken from the scans; they asked Rodolphe if he knew anything about the assault, or if he knew any of these men? Rodolphe tried to evade the questions, but they pressed him, pointing out that one of them had told Julien he knew Rodolphe. But the more he tried to evade the questions, the more exasperated he became, which only gave him away. The exchange grew so heated, the police lieutenant had to take Rodolphe into custody for contempt.
Later that day, the police arrested the men Rodolphe had hired; two of them identified Rodolphe as the man who had hired them to brutalize Julien.
Rodolphe was sentenced to five years in prison for attempted Mechaslaughter and for hiring the thugs to commit the crime. All that for one damn Mecha that crossed the line...
* * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Hal had never been picky about his lovers, especially when it came to Mecha. Tall or short, slender or stocky, hairy or smooth-skinned, gentle or fierce -- he loved sampling them all.
But Julien was a novelty. He might have the simulated organs of a male and his face might have a boyish maleness to it, but he had the softness found only in some females. Hal had caught his own mouth watering when he worked on fixing the little one, which only spurred him onto finish repairing Julien and see what kind of a lay this chubby Mecha made.
And Julien made an odd lay. For one thing, he talked a *lot*, in a whiny murmur of a voice: "You're holding me too hard... You're pinching! ... Ow, was that a tickle or a slap? ...Your bones are sticking into me!" And then there was that high-pitched pig squeal Julien emitted when he climaxed.
But the plusses outweighed the minuses. He seemed to enjoy having Hal on top of him, a fact Hal welcomed with delight. And he felt great in Hal's arms, so soft and cuddle-able, with that sweet round ass and that plump tummy and those soft man-breasts, more like what you'd find on a slender young woman. The nights Hal didn't spend with Marilyn were spent with his arms around Julien's well-filled waist. If they lay face to face, Hal found that Julien's softness fit into his own skinny hollowness perfectly, as if Julien had been made for him.
But Julien was more than a good bed-fellow: He'd make an excellent secretary. He could type faster than Hal could and he had a built-in wireless email server. His left hand had a palmtop screen embedded just under the surface of the derma and his right pointer finger served as a stylus. Hal couldn't have found a better male companion Mecha, except the one who had helped him achieve his present estate.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Amelie wanted Julien back. Since the trial, she had seperated from Rodolphe and had started giving concerts again, and she would need an accompanist for these. With some regret, M. de Meroveque promised to give Julien back to her, but he warned her this might be difficult.
"The problem is, he's imprinted on me," M. de Meroveque told her, as they sat in the outer room of the workshop in his family's villa.
"How can that be?" she asked. "He's not programmed for that."
"No, not originally. But I scanned his cube and I found it's been infected with memetic code sequences. By any chance, do you own a Cybertronics DA-001?"
"We adopted our Darlene a year and a half ago," Amelie said.
"Then that would explain where that code came from."
"So he has... imprinted on you?" she asked, still puzzled.
"Yes, and he's become quite attached to me. He's heard the news as well, about the trial and the conviction. It's put his little electronic mid at ease, knowing... his attacker cannot hurt him again. And since I've done so much to help Julien, he's responded to my attention and care for his injuries."
Amelie picked up some barely veiled hint of suggestion in M. de Meroveque's voice. "And I think *you've* gotten attached to him as well," she said, with a knowing little smile.
M. de Meroveque shrugged, but his eyes betrayed a slightly hooded look. "I had to test his genital simulator somehow, to see if it functioned after I reseated some of the connectors and receptors."
"I hope he's all right now," she said.
"Yes, he's back to perfect working order now. Shall I call him in here?"
She nodded, trying not to look too eager. "Yes, please: I... yes."
M. de Meroveque stood and went into the next room. A few moments later, he came back, leaving the door open behind him. "I must warn you, this is one of his first days when he's been up and about for most of the day. He's still wary of meeting people: the negative feedback from the assault has left him very wary." He turned back to the door. "Julien?" he called over his shoulder.
He stepped aside. A moment or two later, Julien approached and entered the room, peering around him with some hesitation. Then he looked up at Amelie, a slight smile crossing his face. "Hello, Amelie," he said.
"Julien... oh, you really are doing better," she said, approaching him, holding out her arms to him. He let her embrace him and he returned the gesture, but she still sensed that hesitation.
After some moments discussing the matter with M. de Meroveque, Amelie decided to take Julien home with her. M. de Meroveque seemed a little reluctant to let the little one leave, but he still trusted Julien into her care.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * *
But then a week later, Julien disappeared, taking with him a suitcase containing his personal effects: a few shirts and sheet music and his sketchpad and pencils. Amelie reached for the phone to call the police and report his disappearance, but then it dawned on her where she would find the little one.
She drove to the de Meroveque's villa in the city and asked the manservant who answered the door if she could speak with the master of the house. The manservant told her M. de Meroveque was in bed and could not be disturbed. She begged to be admitted, that her Julien had run away and she suspected he had come here.
"Very well," the manservant said, relenting, and opened the door to her. Once she had entered, he led her up the stairs and along a hallway leading into what was clearly the master's apartment. They paused at the bedroom door, the manservant listening carefully for a long moment before opening the door, careful not to make a sound as he did so. He opened the door wide enough for her to see into the room, but he held his arm across the opening, not letting her enter.
On a wide bed within lay two figures nestled under the covers: M. de Meroveque, laying on his back, asleep, his arms draped over a sleek, plump young male Mecha, her Julien, who now lay with his cheek nestled on the older man's chest.
At that point, Amelie knew she could no longer claim Julien as her own. He clearly felt safe here, and she knew he would be in good hands with M. de Meroveque.
Satisfied, she turned and went home, reassured that Julien had found his place.
This takes place about ten years before the action of the "Vatican Council" series. It's a little fragmentary at the beginning, but this is gonna be part of a novel based on Hal/Le Meroveque's rise from anonymity...
* * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Most male companion Mechas, particularly the lover-models, were too scandalously good-looking to have in one's family, which was why Rodolphe Seneschal, a Parisian wine-dealer, had chosen to buy a custom-designed Belladerma model for his personal secretary and man-servant. The J-501 series was ideal: the basic template was a darkly yet quietly good-looking young male in his early twenties, dark brown hair, medium brown eyes, soft-spoken, refined, intelligent and dilligent. Rodolphe opted to have his unit's height set at five feet-three inches, and had a slight layer of baby fat added to the unit's figure, to soften his looks. Call him Julien. Later, Rodolphe would give the little Mecha the surname "Cochonett", the piglet, on account of his plumpness and how delicious the little one really was. Rodolphe's tastes tended to run both ways, and so as not to give his wife Amelie cause for concern that she might not be enough for him, Rodolphe had the little one retrofitted with a simple sensual performance package, enough to allow the little one to keep his master content, and to allow Julien to flirt politely with any unattached female guests at dinner parties. At the same time, they added a classical piano-playing ability chip, so he could accompany Amelie when she sang.
A year and a half later, Rodolphe and Amelie obtained their parental license... a joyous moment for them both... but that hope soon perished when Amelie was found to be sterile. Later, she would be admitted to a hospital for a suicide attempt: she had tried overdosing on sleeping pills, but Julien had called for help before it was too late. Rodolphe sought out something, anything to divert Amelie, give her an outlet for her maternal feelings. He found a Cybertronics Darlene model up for sale at a flea market and brought her home when Amelie came home from the hospital. At first Amelie objected: did they really need one more Mecha in the household? They had Gertrude the housekeeper and Rodolphe had Julien. Yet, Darlene, in her sweet little girl way, found a passage into Amelie's heart.
But as perfect as this arrangement seemed, its perfection could not last. Rodolpje assigned several small chores to Darlene, but Amelie would not hear of it. Rodolphe accused his wife of being too lenient with their "daughter", but Amelie turned this around, accusing her husband of being too harsh with the little girl-Mecha. Soon enough, Darlene found that if she wanted something, she had only to go to Maman for it.
At the same time, an odd change started to come over Julien; he started to manifest some of Darlene's behavior: sulking if asked to do something he suddenly found "distasteful". A whiny, sulky note came into his tone of voice, something Rodolphe had never heard before.
On account of the irritations in his home, Rodolphe started staying away from home longer when he went away on business trips. Amelie accused him of spending more time working than he did with his family, which only exacerbated the rawness of his nerves.
During his time at home, Rodolphe noticed an odd change in Amelie's attitude toward Julien, whom he had started leaving at home since, in his estimation, the Mecha had become too unreliable. Before, she had simply regarded Julien as one of the house Mechas: she spoke to him only when she had an order for him and that had been infrequent. Now, Rodolphe noticed a certain air of ...familiarity between his wife and the little Mecha.
He had to find out what was going on, and thus, on his next trip, Rodolphe came home a half a day earlier than he had planned.
He entered the house late at night, when all lay still. He scanned each room, looking for evidence: an open wine bottle and two used glasses on a table beside the piano; damp towels smelling of Amelie's bath salts in the bathroom.
Then... in the bedroom, he found someone lying next to Amelie, a dark tousled head on Rodolphe's pillow, next to Amelie's red-gold head, her willowy form nestled with Julien's soft, stubby shape. She lay asleep while the Mecha lay awake.
Rodolphe grabbed Julien by the scruff of the neck, then hauled him out of bed and onto the floor. Startled, Julien let out a loud squeal of terror. Amelie awakened and started to sit up, but her gaze met Rodolphe's blazing eyes and she dropped her gaze in guilt.
On the spot, Rodolphe forbade Julien to have nothing but the most perfunctory contact with Amelie, but he might as well have told a vine not to climb up the nearest tree. He caught Julien with Amelie again, a month later, in the middle of the day.
He couldn't keep this uppity Mecha around, and the laws in Europe forebade an owner from wiping a Mecha's cube unless it was acting dangerously. All Julien had done was seduce his master's wife, or allow the mistress of the house to seduce him. And damaging a Mecha carried the same penalty as stabbing a human.
There were still some dissatisfied people in Europe who, despite all the advances the pro-Mecha rights groups had made, still hated Mechas with a passion. They were much less visible and less numerous than they had been when Rodolphe was young, but he managed to find a man, in the seedier side of Paris, who promised to put a good scare into Julien. He'll be passing a certain spot at a certain time: his rambles through the city on his days off are perfectly predictable. Follow him, then approach him and tell him he is needed at home. You know what to do next...
* * * * * * * * * * * * * *
He was just taking a walk, buying himself a new shirt to wear at the wine-tasting party that week, and he was going to find a little present for Amelie, when a tall man in a leather jacket approached him.
"Hey there, Julien," the stranger said.
"And have I had the chance to meet you before, sirrah?" Julien asked, looking up at him, trying to place the stranger's face.
"No, but I work for your boss, Rodolphe Seneschal. He sent me lookin' for you: he needs you at home right away."
"But this is my half-day, when I shop for my own small necessities," Julien objected.
"Well, it just turned into a quarter-day." The stranger took him under the arm and hustled him along the street before turning down an alleyway. Julien always took care to avoid these places: they were too dark and dirty for his preferences, and this one, with its overturned trash cans spilling out on the cracked pavement, was no exception.
"This is not the way back to my master's home," Julien said, as the alleyway came to a dead end.
"No, but we still got business with you," the stranger said, throwing Julien's back against a wall.
A door in the back wall of one of the buildings that hemmed them in opened up and two other rough-looking men emerged. One held a small wooden club in his hand, the other drew a long-bladed knife from a sheath in one of his boots. They grinned horribly as they closed in on Julien...
* * * * * * * * * * * * * *
That evening in the Seneschal household, Amelie and Darlene were distraught at Julien's disappearance. Darlene sat curled up on a window seat, watching for her friend to return. Rodolphe made a perfunctory call to the police to report their houseboy Mecha had disappeared while it was out running errands, but he himself doubted Julien would return.
"He's a Belladerma model: they're worth a lot of money, so any thug would want to swipe him and resell him to the top bidder," Rodolphe said.
"But won't Julien object to that?" Amelie said.
"He's only a machine, he's not smart enough to do that, especially if someone approaches him in a kind manner," Rodolphe said. "You know how easy it is to win his affections."
* * * * * * * * * * * * * *
He was heading home for the day, so he took a short-cut -- Halloran "Hal" McGeever, photo journalist for Le Monde, heading back to assume his alter-ego, Henri Armand de Meroveque, the next of the Merovingians... The last sort of person you'd expect to find traversing Paris's web of alleyways, but back alleys -- particularly ones that had recently become crime scenes -- were his journalistic specialty.
Out of the corner of his eye, he spotted something lying on the pavement: a body lying prone on the muddy ground, fine clothes dishevelled, probably some Parisian playboy who'd fallen afoul with a group of thugs.
Hal turned toward the body, adjusting the focus on his camera and crouching closer to get the right shot.
But just then, the injured youth sat up, wobbling as if he might fall over and turned his face to Hal's.
The young man was a Mecha, the derma torn from the right side of his face and the eye smashed on that side, the jaw hanging slack from the metal understructures. Someone had slashed much of the derma on his torso as well, leaving the torso housing and the lower chip boards exposed.
The Mecha's one good eye rolled up in fear and it cowered back from Hal. It tried to say something, but its voice box must have been damaged in the attack.
"Hey... hey... easy there now, fella, easy," Hal said, putting down his camera. "It's okay: I'm not gonna hurt you, little fella." He approached it slowly, carefully. The Mecha flinched back, but its fearful gaze seemed to soften a little. It wasn't much taller than he was, and from what Hal could tell, it was a male, a custom job, and quite probably a Belladerma, from the look of things: it wasn't industry standard to make male Mechas that short or give them the chubby figure they'd given this little guy.
"Hey, I'm here to help you: It might take a little doing, but I can fix you," Hal said, kneeling in front of the little Mecha. The stray studied his face with its -- his undamaged eye, clearly incredulous, but it did not try to pull away from him.
Hal cupped the Mecha's undamaged cheek in one hand. The Mecha closed its undamaged eye and leaned into the touch. "You liked that? Well then... you take it easy: I'm going to get you out of here and fix you up."
He reached behind the Mecha's left ear, finding the cube wait switch, then laid the Mecha on his back on the ground before switching him off. Once the Mecha lay quiet, Hal reached into his coat for his cellphone, calling for the Twins to meet him...
* * * * * * * * * * * * * *
"Ugh... the poor little thing," Marilyn said, when Hal had got the Mecha home and had it -- him laid out on the large work table in his workshop. "Do you have any idea what happened to him?"
"Other than someone took a crowbar or a baseball bat to his eye and slashed him up... I'll have to scan his cube and find out who did it," Hal said. "He's a custom job, too... that'll make it a *lot* of fun trying to put him back together."
"But you can do it, can you?" Marilyn asked, averting her eyes.
"I'll give it my best," Hal said, rolling up his sleeves and reaching for a cube scanner.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * *
The hardest part about repairing a custom unit was getting the parts for it. Hal could weld the cracks in the torso and the cranial housings, but finding the silicon to repair the derma was a bit of a challenge. For one thing, the derma had a backing layer of simulated baby fat made from foam silicon. For another thing, to add to this little guy's child-like roly-poly figure, they had added water sacs under the skin to support the especially pudgy spots: the insides of his thighs, his belly and on his chest. Whoever had attacked the little one had slashed them clean open with a sharp knife. Hal had had to bring the little Mecha down to the Belladerma studio in Rome to have these parts replaced. But slowly, Julien started to look more like a Mecha and less like a scrapheap
But one thing Hal could do easily was scan Julien's cube. What he found there angered him so much, he burned some of the visual scans onto disks and sent them to the police. They had been looking for Julien and the case had started to run cold, but this was exactly the lead they needed.
When the police called Rodolphe Seneschal, telling them they had found Julien, he immediately went to the precinct to see if he could get Julien back. But the police had something else to inform him about.
When he arrived, two detectives confronted him with still photos taken from the scans; they asked Rodolphe if he knew anything about the assault, or if he knew any of these men? Rodolphe tried to evade the questions, but they pressed him, pointing out that one of them had told Julien he knew Rodolphe. But the more he tried to evade the questions, the more exasperated he became, which only gave him away. The exchange grew so heated, the police lieutenant had to take Rodolphe into custody for contempt.
Later that day, the police arrested the men Rodolphe had hired; two of them identified Rodolphe as the man who had hired them to brutalize Julien.
Rodolphe was sentenced to five years in prison for attempted Mechaslaughter and for hiring the thugs to commit the crime. All that for one damn Mecha that crossed the line...
* * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Hal had never been picky about his lovers, especially when it came to Mecha. Tall or short, slender or stocky, hairy or smooth-skinned, gentle or fierce -- he loved sampling them all.
But Julien was a novelty. He might have the simulated organs of a male and his face might have a boyish maleness to it, but he had the softness found only in some females. Hal had caught his own mouth watering when he worked on fixing the little one, which only spurred him onto finish repairing Julien and see what kind of a lay this chubby Mecha made.
And Julien made an odd lay. For one thing, he talked a *lot*, in a whiny murmur of a voice: "You're holding me too hard... You're pinching! ... Ow, was that a tickle or a slap? ...Your bones are sticking into me!" And then there was that high-pitched pig squeal Julien emitted when he climaxed.
But the plusses outweighed the minuses. He seemed to enjoy having Hal on top of him, a fact Hal welcomed with delight. And he felt great in Hal's arms, so soft and cuddle-able, with that sweet round ass and that plump tummy and those soft man-breasts, more like what you'd find on a slender young woman. The nights Hal didn't spend with Marilyn were spent with his arms around Julien's well-filled waist. If they lay face to face, Hal found that Julien's softness fit into his own skinny hollowness perfectly, as if Julien had been made for him.
But Julien was more than a good bed-fellow: He'd make an excellent secretary. He could type faster than Hal could and he had a built-in wireless email server. His left hand had a palmtop screen embedded just under the surface of the derma and his right pointer finger served as a stylus. Hal couldn't have found a better male companion Mecha, except the one who had helped him achieve his present estate.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Amelie wanted Julien back. Since the trial, she had seperated from Rodolphe and had started giving concerts again, and she would need an accompanist for these. With some regret, M. de Meroveque promised to give Julien back to her, but he warned her this might be difficult.
"The problem is, he's imprinted on me," M. de Meroveque told her, as they sat in the outer room of the workshop in his family's villa.
"How can that be?" she asked. "He's not programmed for that."
"No, not originally. But I scanned his cube and I found it's been infected with memetic code sequences. By any chance, do you own a Cybertronics DA-001?"
"We adopted our Darlene a year and a half ago," Amelie said.
"Then that would explain where that code came from."
"So he has... imprinted on you?" she asked, still puzzled.
"Yes, and he's become quite attached to me. He's heard the news as well, about the trial and the conviction. It's put his little electronic mid at ease, knowing... his attacker cannot hurt him again. And since I've done so much to help Julien, he's responded to my attention and care for his injuries."
Amelie picked up some barely veiled hint of suggestion in M. de Meroveque's voice. "And I think *you've* gotten attached to him as well," she said, with a knowing little smile.
M. de Meroveque shrugged, but his eyes betrayed a slightly hooded look. "I had to test his genital simulator somehow, to see if it functioned after I reseated some of the connectors and receptors."
"I hope he's all right now," she said.
"Yes, he's back to perfect working order now. Shall I call him in here?"
She nodded, trying not to look too eager. "Yes, please: I... yes."
M. de Meroveque stood and went into the next room. A few moments later, he came back, leaving the door open behind him. "I must warn you, this is one of his first days when he's been up and about for most of the day. He's still wary of meeting people: the negative feedback from the assault has left him very wary." He turned back to the door. "Julien?" he called over his shoulder.
He stepped aside. A moment or two later, Julien approached and entered the room, peering around him with some hesitation. Then he looked up at Amelie, a slight smile crossing his face. "Hello, Amelie," he said.
"Julien... oh, you really are doing better," she said, approaching him, holding out her arms to him. He let her embrace him and he returned the gesture, but she still sensed that hesitation.
After some moments discussing the matter with M. de Meroveque, Amelie decided to take Julien home with her. M. de Meroveque seemed a little reluctant to let the little one leave, but he still trusted Julien into her care.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * *
But then a week later, Julien disappeared, taking with him a suitcase containing his personal effects: a few shirts and sheet music and his sketchpad and pencils. Amelie reached for the phone to call the police and report his disappearance, but then it dawned on her where she would find the little one.
She drove to the de Meroveque's villa in the city and asked the manservant who answered the door if she could speak with the master of the house. The manservant told her M. de Meroveque was in bed and could not be disturbed. She begged to be admitted, that her Julien had run away and she suspected he had come here.
"Very well," the manservant said, relenting, and opened the door to her. Once she had entered, he led her up the stairs and along a hallway leading into what was clearly the master's apartment. They paused at the bedroom door, the manservant listening carefully for a long moment before opening the door, careful not to make a sound as he did so. He opened the door wide enough for her to see into the room, but he held his arm across the opening, not letting her enter.
On a wide bed within lay two figures nestled under the covers: M. de Meroveque, laying on his back, asleep, his arms draped over a sleek, plump young male Mecha, her Julien, who now lay with his cheek nestled on the older man's chest.
At that point, Amelie knew she could no longer claim Julien as her own. He clearly felt safe here, and she knew he would be in good hands with M. de Meroveque.
Satisfied, she turned and went home, reassured that Julien had found his place.
