“Sit!” The girl snapped, patting the middle of the bed, smirking coyly at Olivia. Grunting, her girlfriend sheepishly turned back towards the mattress and resentfully slunk onto its resilient surface. To be entirely honest it felt good, great even, finally relaxing and letting go a bit, giving someone else the reins for a change, after dominating her mother so relentlessly.
“Fuck.” Olivia cursed, more an affectionate nod to their agreement than an authentic lamentation. Crawling slowly forward on her hands and knees towards her girlfriend, she did her best to play the part. It aroused her a little.
“Huh-ha.” Maithri huffed triumphantly, cheeks flushing as she smiled happily. She glanced over at Marcella and beckoned her towards the right side of the bed. “She may be in charge of you Marcy, but she’s my boneco de merda in this relationship.” Her pronunciation perfect. The Indian girl cocked her head and stroked her chin thoughtfully. “Although I suppose in a certain regard that makes both of you my… Little bitch.” She tittered musically, cackling at the end.
“You know, your Portuguese has really gotten good little Desi.” Marcella remarked dryly as she exchanged a rueful glance with her daughter as she wiggled down under the sheets, pulling the covers partially over the three of them. Almost instantly both Maithri and Marcella turned towards Olivia, who was laying on her back staring up at the ceiling, just trying to make sense of it all. The two women curled into her, their hands resting on her belly and against her shoulders. Their heads moved in close. “This is nice.” Marcella murmured, tucking her chin into the space between her daughter’s ear and neck.
“Yeah it is.” Maithri murmured back, her hand sliding up to cup one of Olivia’s breasts. “Goodnight… Honey.” She whispered into her girlfriend’s ear as she closed her eyes and somehow fell instantly asleep. Olivia felt a surge of jealousy that dwarfed any she’d ever had before. She would have to have Maithri teach her that convenient trick some day. Marcella just snickered quietly.
“You really picked a winner.” She simpered, sliding her hand softly up and down her daughter’s belly, just her fingertips seeming to make contact.
“I know.” Olivia answered, groaning loudly, the hoard of neurotic butterflies in her stomach threatening to gnaw their way out. This really was like her fantasy, here she was, finally in bed with two other women, both of them incredibly beautiful, sensual, sexual. The two most important women in the world. Both of them hers. She smiled. Her mother’s hand glided down and settled over her almost disturbingly soggy mound. It didn’t squeeze or stroke, it just gently cupped and relaxed. Holding her pussy possessively. It sent subtle tingling pleasure bubbling up throughout her body, like she was a fizzy drink, freshly decanted female champagne.
Her drowsy mind began to wander, to slip in and out of consciousness, she could not be certain that she was awake. Dreams or perhaps visions were weaving in and out of her memories, winding slowly upward into an uncertain future, budding, blooming into fantastical flowers of revelation; their petals were metal, plastic and glass, their stamens antenna, impossibly complex and intricate, layer upon layer of wires and transistors, broadcasting signals that only she could somehow understand. “Yes… Yes…” She mumbled in her sleep, all the pieces falling perfectly into place. She knew what was coming, and she knew what she had to do, the vision had opened her inner eye exposing the threads of fate. She held them in her hands, searing filaments of liquid golden light, meandering and alive like rivers of molten metal melting through the malleable tapestry of spacetime.
They were mesmerizing and immutable, except… She looked closer, feeling their susceptibility, their weakness. She was drawn to certain places of instability, peering deeper and deeper into the smoldering, welling inferno. It was like looking into the sun, but her eye was peerless, unblemished, it could pierce through anything… The smoke, the sparks, the haze, even the lethal rays of invisible energy that were all around her now… They were immaterial. She blew back the curtain with her gentle frosty breath and it parted gratefully. Eager and willing to expose itself to her fearless curiosity.
“There you are.” She whispered, her mind finally buckling, surrendering to the overwhelming pressure of sleep and precognition… But not before she’d caught a glimpse. A world within worlds, and the hidden gate that led to it.
And still the highlight for Olivia, above everything else, beyond all the wonders of prescience and the encroaching singularity was her mother’s growing belly. She’d wake up early, before the sun had even started to rise and lift up the blankets so that she could see it. That mystical, mesmerizing gentle hump. In all honesty it was still not super obvious, not when Marcella was wearing clothes at least. But once her mom had stripped down after work, taken off her skirt and blouse, standing before Olivia in her underwear, she could see it clear as day. “Baby!” She nearly squealed, running her hand tenderly over the darkly luminous slope.
When Marcella was laying down, flat on her back in bed (as she was now) it was even more obvious. Her mom moaned quietly in her sleep. Olivia didn’t want to wake her so she pulled the covers back down over the three of them. Somehow during the night Marcella had ended up between them, it didn’t seem physically possible, but that’s how it was. Olivia sighed, her mind muddled, time was playing tricks on her. She could see and feel her mother’s belly under her fingers, much larger now, she was getting close! Then it was smooth again, almost flat but not. The future the present the past, they were all blending together.
She grunted and shook her head, focusing her mind until her consciousness came drifting back to the moment at hand, landing like a single leaf on the surface of a still glassy pond. Rings radiated outwards, subsided, and then she was back. The haze lifting as the sunlight streamed through her windows, lighting up her bedroom. Maithri snored softly, Marcella drooled silently onto Olivia’s pillow.
She’d seen this very moment in her vision, it was how everything began. There would be many pleasant, impossibly delicious days like this for awhile, and then things would get exciting again. Her mother and girlfriend would wake soon, life would go on as normal… Well, maybe normal wasn’t exactly the right word. She grinned sheepishly, marveling at how easily and freely the emotions came and went, despite everything she knew was going to happen. There were still a few blank spots of course, shadowy, mysterious areas that had yet to be revealed. And then those places where the metal had cooled completely, where no amount of fire or passion could possibly stir it back to life.
She shrugged to no one in particular, a rooster crowed loudly and like a bubble bursting, their day began.
A handful of months later, while the girls were walking home, Maithri stopped her girlfriend near the villa’s gate and led her slowly over to the dried up fountain. They sat down on its edge, side by side. “The factory is shutting down.” She said quietly. Olivia couldn’t exactly say she was surprised. “I just thought you should hear it from me first, before the official announcement. Maithri said softly. “It’s not just us though.” She perked up, tried to smile. “Pretty much all the factories South of Calico are shutting down, even the high-tech ones. The HAND is taking over production for them too. The truth is that even borderline slave labor can’t compete with labor that costs nothing.”
Olivia nodded ambivalently. The HAND, that’s what Calico was calling the AI now. She’d always known that it was only a matter of time before they were replaced, but there was no reason to upset her girlfriend by telling her everything she knew. The work they had always done at the Circuitos wasn’t very complicated, robots could have done it, and would have, if human workers hadn’t been marginally cheaper. It all came down to the cost of energy and the AI… No, the ‘HAND’, had seemingly solved that problem. “It’s kind of funny don’t you think, that it’s smart enough to do our jobs but not smart enough to do something else.”
Maithri blinked, this was the last reaction she’d expected, and furthermore she wasn’t even entirely sure what her girlfriend meant. “Something… Else?” She said, trying to fit the oblong concept into the context of their conversation.
“Yeah, just look at what it’s accomplished in the last few months, objectively it could do anything it wanted, anything at all, and yet…” She trailed off, losing her focus for a second before turning back to her friend. “It’s still helping us.”
“Helping?” Maithri looked even more confused. “But I thought you’d be upset about the factory, your job…”
But Olivia just laughed. “Are you kidding? I hated that place. I mean, it was horrible. It had some rustic charm, but… Yikes.” Olivia reached down and subconsciously rubbed the thick, pale burn scars on her wrist. “Good riddance.”
Maithri thought about this for awhile. “But now we’re both out of work, I was just getting used to having money again.” She frowned and seemed dangerously close to sulking.
“You still don’t get it do you.” Olivia sniffed. “Every day you’ve been reading those reports, getting the inside scoop. Maybe you’re too close to see it.” She leaned in, almost like they were about to kiss. “The… HAND, it’s fixing everything we fucked up. Everything.” She emphasized dramatically, her eyes widening as they locked with Maithri’s. “It’s not going to stop and it’s just getting started. Have you ever really thought about the way things are in the Favela? It’s so broken, we were left for dead, thrown away and that was before the strokes.”
“If it wasn’t for treating us like lab rats and all the trash the state keeps dumping in our backyard we wouldn’t even be here. The HAND could have started in the city, but it didn’t. It’s here because we’re the worst case scenario, we need fixing the most. Everything it’s done has been to help us. But…” She paused, wondering if she should really continue, worried that it might traumatize her girlfriend, or even worse that her vision might be right. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath.
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