Symbolical Decisions

It felt good to be desired. Regardless of situation and time, having an attractive person of the desired sex pining for one’s attention was an ego booster. Base satisfaction aside, he did not need Lyndell flirting with him in her enticingly forlorn ways.

Not that she was pursuing him in an aggressive way. After the comment on his hands, the rest of the conversation had been cordial. Interest professed, she moved to understand what human interest actually meant. There was no naivety to her behaviour, just the distance created by her previous state of being. She would transition closer in due time.

For the time being, he left her handling to Rave and Momo. The latter usually handled it when there was someone the harem cared for.

‘I still didn’t ask about the Lorylim connection to the Nirvana,’ it occurred to John. ‘So much to do that certain topics slip my mind… a manifestation of stress, I suppose. I haven’t even continued the wedding planning.’ The spontaneous thought made him chuckle, then grow silent. ‘There is no point in planning a mundane ceremony now.’

In a grave mood, he continued to walk.

Thankfully, his current task did not require him to look approachable nor did it ask of him to say much. He was more of an attachment, walking ahead of a small procedure that went through the various civilian camps all over the Guild Hall. They were making sure everything was in order. Primarily, Undine and Gnome were going through and fixing everyone up. The season elemental’s minor healing powers were still enough to mend most people.

John was useless in this scenario. He was there only so the people built the positive association. If he could have, he would have gotten his hands dirty. The various automatic processes of the Guild Hall were taking care of that, guzzling down tens of thousands of dollars a second. Not a big issue, he had the money to spare.

Technically speaking, both the work of the elementals and the automatic processes of the Guild Hall came from him. The public knew that. Still, he felt like he should have done something physical. Maybe that was just his brain trying to find an external task to occupy it and draw him away from the painful memories.

He let his mind wander through the sparse recollections of his youth. One time, he must have been 7 or so, his father took him out on a trip. There had been some reason for it, John couldn’t recall. He didn’t remember where they had gone either. He just remembered sitting on Benjamin’s shoulders, swatting the branches of pine trees, and predictably cutting his palm open on the bark. He realized now that was the last time his father had carried him on his shoulders. He had gotten too big after that.

It was a sweet torment to remember this, like a stinging disinfectant poured over the wounds in his soul.

The tour went on and John’s mind eventually moved elsewhere. He let it happen. He was of the opinion that a lot of processes of the psyche were best left to the undercurrents of the human condition. Complicated as a person was, they were ultimately the product of evolution. The mind often had the processes to deal with its own issues, given time. Intuition was a valid tool, if intuition was honed properly.

‘I wonder if the people expect my public appearance to change,’ John thought. ‘A lot of philosophical differences between monarchs and elected leaders that I have read about come from a preference for the idealized and the cynical. People that tend to prefer monarchies are more likely to prefer a leader that is an idea, while those that prefer elected officials want someone that is of their own stock. Well, that is one way to look at these things.’

Breaking down the question of what made some people monarchists and others republicans was too complicated for a single factor analysis. Still, looking at something in isolation was an interesting thought exercise.

As president, John had made it a point to try and appear relatable. He mixed with the people, spoke to reporters like equals, held regular press conferences, and so on. As king, perhaps it would be better to approach such matters with a degree of aloofness. He was superior to the people. Not in mentality, he would continue to avoid that mindset like the plague, but in power and position in the hierarchy.

‘In a way, it’s probably demeaning if I pretend I am just like them… like a millionaire saying they relate to the struggles of beggars. I’m not part of the people anymore, I’m supposed to help them from above not from within. I suppose that’s why they say that king’s rule by divine right on the mundane side... I should ask Lydia about codes of conducts for Abyssal monarchs. I only ever read the one.’

Scarlett: If you have a moment, come to the workshop.

The message popped up in front of John just as they wrapped up with their current encampment. ‘Might as well,’ he thought. “I’ll take my leave, another matter just called for my attention,” he said to Emrik.

The former Speaker of Commons glanced at him, then nodded. “I believe this is enough of a public appearance from you anyhow.”

In that he and the third strongest member of government agreed. Much like John’s powers were currently unformalized, so were the restrictions on what posts Emrik’s could hold effectively lifted. John was king and Emrik might as well have been a powerful duke in the current situation, holding political sway over the former Lake Alliance members as a whole. That power was weakened by the uncertain fate of that territory.

That was a matter for the military meeting in the evening. The special forces were penetrating as deep as they could go and gathering data. Until that was completed, other matters could be attended to.

The workshop Scarlett was talking about was inside the Palace. Getting there was a swift affair, Magus Step and running getting him back home within minutes. The throne room was occupied 24/7 by military staff. Respectful nods were all they had to offer him. He did not ask for more. Even if he was a monarch now, he did not care to become the kind of king that demanded respect be paid to hierarchy.

A couple of doors later, he entered the new domain of the crafting crew.

Dimension stretching magic had hollowed out a space somewhere within the metaphysical measurements of the structure. Much like Momo’s vertical library of hovering bookshelves, the workshop was not just one room, but many conjoined. A towering furnace set in the middle of a concrete chamber, four stories tall. Well, the skeleton of such a furnace was set there.

Like the network of alchemical tubes, the complicated web of wires and hardware, or the esoteric arrangement of religious symbols, the forge was only in the beginning stages of being set up. The conjoined working spaces of the crafting crew being built inside the Palace still carried with it a degree of a security risk. Explosions could and doubtlessly would happen at some point. Alas, in the current situation, John would rather risk an explosion at home than have his crafting crew be caught out on their own again.

The members of said arrangement were all present. Hailey was hammering more plates onto the skeleton of her furnace. Lee was handing said plates up to her. Lorelei was studying some scripture in her corner of the massive central hub. Delicia and Scarlett were out of view, but John knew the former to be inside one of the attached side rooms. The latter wouldn’t have called him there if she wasn’t ready to receive him.

Knowing what segment of the hall was Scarlett’s did not take a genius. John strolled through a garden of LED lights and server farms. Mechanical tendrils rolled on treads around the area, assembling structures on the behest of their designer. Fans whirled quietly, moving air in gentle gusts. Among the multitude of sounds, one stood out.

Metallica blasted from speakers in one of the side rooms. John recognized the interlude of Master of Puppets. Guitars mixed with vocals. He stepped past the open door.

Scarlett had her long, straight hair tied up in a high ponytail. Her swept bangs stubbornly refused to be part of that constraint, especially the tresses that usually half-covered one of her eyes. She brushed the hairs behind her ear. In the process, she noticed John walking up to her.

“God, you’re beautiful,” he muttered instinctively.

Serious and prickly as the redhead usually was, this one got her. A blush bloomed on her aesthetic, androgynous features. It mixed with the light sweat she had worked up during her work, staining the edges of her red tank top. The working woman’s look suited her just as much as her usual business attire.

“Shut the fuck up,” she snapped at him, raising a mechanical hand to hide the big smile on her pink lips.

John did shut up, but only because he needed his lips for something else. He took her by the wrist, moving the arm aside, then placed both of his hands on her cheeks. The sides of his index fingers felt the metal of her pointy ear implants. For all the cybernetics inside her, for all of the magic that danced in her eyes like circuit lines, she was still human. Even if she had ascended into some state of cyber elf, he would have kissed her.

Flustered kisses were a special treat. Not having recovered from his words, Scarlett was putty in his hands. Her tongue met his instinctively and yielded to his advances. Warm, mechanical fingers brushed over his sleeves. The silicone layers mimicked the sensation of skin well enough and her gentle intentions did the rest.

“Ass…” she muttered under her breath when he pulled away.

“For kissing you or for stopping?” John asked with a mild smile on his face.

“Yes.” She put a hand on his chest and gently pushed.

Chuckling, John straightened up fully and checked what Scarlett was working on. It was one of the clawed arms that she had left for Boston with. Shortly after returning, she must have taken those limbs off in favour of versions that were closer to the human base. “I assume Hailey had them ready for you?” John asked, brushing a hand over Scarlett’s shoulder.

The synthetic skin was sensitive to the touch, evident by the redhead’s mild shudder. In its dimensions, the arms and her robotic legs resembled her original limbs exactly. Even the toes had been remodelled accurately. As John understood it, artificial limbs were easier to control if they mapped onto the dimensions the soul was used to. The two were intrinsically linked in most entities, human or not.

For their closeness to the shape, the limbs were clearly artificial. The sockets were pronounced, red-tinted brass lines that marked where her original arms and legs had started and where her flesh now ended. The limbs themselves had covers of synthetic skin, but much of the wired, mechanical muscle still lay exposed, as did the doll-like joints and hinges.

“Not her best work,” Scarlett stated. “It beats trying to hold a screwdriver with claws though.” She picked up the utensil again and got back to working on the limb. “I’ll have proper limbs for casual situations eventually.”

“Doesn’t it hurt like hell whenever you switch them out?”

“Yes,” Scarlett answered dismissively. “I’m not going to make a habit out of it. For efficiency, it’s not an issue.”

John grumbled something under his breath. Any of his women being subjected to pain repeatedly rubbed him the wrong way. Alas, he did not have the expertise to suggest a workaround for the issue. If Scarlett believed the most effective solution was to have a set of limbs for everyday situations and one for combat situations, that most likely was the most effective solution.

“If it helps you, the pain is the worst the first time around. The system diagnostics that made all the nerve ends flare up do not fire at the same intensity for repeat attachment of the same limbs to the same system. By the fourth time, it’s like getting your hand stuck in a door for a second. Both technology and biology are pretty adaptable.”

“It helps a little bit,” John admitted and looked over her arm another time.

“You like synthetic lines, don’t you?” she asked him.

“Since we already crossed the bridge of your limbs being gone… I suppose I do, yes,” John admitted. It was hard to claim otherwise when his first choice of maid had been to animate an A2 figurine, which prominently showed black gaps between segments of synthetic skin. “I’m known to like my oddities.”

“That you are,” Scarlett agreed, loosened one more screw, then got up. “Come along.”

As he did, John got a good look at her exo-spine. The permanent addition to her physiology was integrated even more harmoniously than the sockets for her limbs. It was flat enough to her skin that even the sweat-damp tank top barely highlighted it. The upper edge of the segmented cybernetic was lost in lower strands of her hair. Between the small top and the hot pants so tiny they were basically a glorified thong, the integration point for a tail sat covered by a protective plate.

John’s eyes wandered just a bit down to what her hot pants covered. The seam dug into the twin hills of her juicy ass, hugging it all so tightly that she might as well have been naked. For once, such minimalistic clothing wasn’t for his viewing pleasure. With the mechanical legs that replaced her thighs being what they were, putting pants on top of them would have served little to no purpose.

Of all the things that the Lorylim had taken from him, Scarlett’s limbs were a fair bit down the list. They were still on the list though. He did not doubt that she would construct herself a pair of legs that were just as satisfying to squeeze, but he still would know. At least the precision dismemberments she had done with her own machine had left her glutes intact.

John’s thoughts, between serious and relaxed, led him to another question. “How come you are sweaty?”

Scarlett wiggled her well-oiled fingers. “Mechanical limbs are programmed to give feedback as accurately as possible to the body. Part of that means that when the artificial fibres get exhausted or overheated, the body kicks in with the usual responses.”

“Sounds inefficient?”

“It is not. Base bodily functions and esoteric measures are linked. If your body doesn’t think it needs to cool down, the magical energies won’t follow suit. The same shit that makes an Abyssal’s flesh so sturdy also works to help reinforce the prosthetics’ functions, as long as the body is sufficiently tricked.”

“Interesting.” John filed that away among the many, many fields of study that he knew a bit about by osmosis.

“And here is what we should talk about,” Scarlett said and opened the only closed door that John had encountered so far.

It was a small room, dominated by a singular machine. If John had to liken it to anything, it would have been an enormous fusion between a MRI machine and the heavily mechanized chairs that dentists used. In the cushioned centre lay, surrounded by hovering pieces of metal, a familiar white-haired woman. A white bodysuit covered her armless, legless body.

“If you could Observe her for me,” Scarlett requested.