The door to Alaema's room was closed, as she expected. It was only a few seconds after their confrontation, but already, the emotional weight caused it to feel as though it carried the memory her entire life.

She glanced at her right hand, which still stung a bit. Even now, there was a slight unreality to it, as if it had been neither a dream, nor a hallucination. But Mericlou was painfully aware that it was neither.

She slapped her!

She had never so much as harmed a fly in all her life, and she had slapped her own sister, the very one she went through every long inch of red tape to buy from the abuse of that horrible cyber brothel.

As bad as it had been with her old master, the brothels were far worse. There, androids were treated like nothing more than cheap toys, and were fed on food that was unfit for animals. The only humane treatment they were afforded were daily disinfectant treatments, pleasing clothes, and perfumes to mask the odor from the cells where they were kept after business hours. And out of all the androids in the brothel, Alaema was the worst off, wasted from overuse and neglect, and yet the only one whose CPU was not irreparably damaged. She had bought her, nursed her back to health, and paid for her complete overhaul, even though her personality traits had been somewhat less than charming. But as flighty, overly sensual, and overbearing as she could be -and normally was-, Mericlou still loved her.

A part of her, overcome with regret, wanted to beg Alaema's forgiveness, but was restricted by the part that had been hurt by her sister's words. Alaema well knew that the submissive personality of her own make and model when it came to sexual propositions was not something to be insulted. Besides, that might have been the way it was for most other Alerian models, but not for her. Despite the danger, she had herself re-programmed long ago. Gone were the days of the sterility crisis, when her kind was needed to supplement the low birth of fertile humans, and so in order to deter less scrupulous humans from taking advantage of her, she had had her logic systems upgraded, weeding out the overt passiveness associated with her kind.

She knew that she should have had Alaema reprogrammed as well, but because of her personality being such a large part of her basic programming, it was far more dangerous to alter her CPU. After discussing it with her brothers, she had decided against it. Still, Alaema had no right to insult her, not even knowing the truth about her. She deserved that slap.




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