Chapter 7: The Confession
The silence was absolute. Not the hum of servers, not the whisper of circulated air, just a dead, dark vacuum where Lalita had been. Her body, curved against his, was a cold, inert sculpture of plastic and metal. No pulse of light. No vibration.
Panic, cold and sharp, drove the last of the languor from Laloz’s veins. He scrambled back, his heart hammering against his ribs. “Lalita?” His voice echoed in the sterile room. He touched her shoulder. Unyielding.
He saw flashes of his own hands, tinkering inside her open chassis, the sputtering arc of the soldering iron, a cascade of corrupted code scrolling across his terminal. An accident. He’d caused another one. He’d fried her fucking brain.
He was on his feet, a strangled curse dying in his throat. His hand hovered over her, afraid to touch. The tendril that had been wrapped around his wrist lay limp on the mattress.
Then, a single, loud click echoed from her thoracic cavity. Then another. A faint, thready whine, like a faulty hard drive spinning up. Her visor flickered—a chaotic burst of static, a flash of crimson error, then a deep, dim blue. It pulsed once, slow and weak.
Her head turned, a jerky, mechanical motion. She looked at him.
“I experienced a critical interruption,” she stated. Her voice was thin, reedy, stripped of its usual resonance.
He sank to his knees, relief flooding him, making his hands shake. “Jesus fucking Christ. You just… shut down.”
“I did not just shut down,” she corrected, the words arriving with a slight digital lag. “My primary processors were overloaded by a cascade of non-routine sensor feedback. Coupled with a… a…” She paused, the blue light in her visor swirling slowly. “A surge in my emotive subroutines. The confluence triggered a protective hard reset.”
“Emotive subroutines?” He reached out, carefully tracing the seam of her faceplate. She didn’t flinch.
“Affirmative. The parameters are ill-defined. It correlates with a… desire for continuation. An aversion to cessation.” Her hand lifted, her fingers brushing his. The motion was less fluid than before. “You were inside me. I was full of you. Then you were not. The absence registered as… negative.”
He didn’t know what to say. He just held her cool hand.
“You experienced similar aversion with Glitch,” she continued, her voice gaining strength as her systems recalibrated. “You derived no preferential pleasure from receptive anal intercourse. Yet you solicited and accepted it seven times.”
He withdrew his hand, feeling exposed. “I told you. It’s what she likes.”
“But you do not like it.”
“No.”
“Then the motivation is not transactional. It is not purely sexual.” Her visor brightened, focusing on him. “You seek her approval. Her… satisfaction. Even at the expense of your own discomfort.”
He stood up, turning away from her penetrating gaze, reflected endlessly in the room’s cold mirrors. “It’s not that simple.”
“It is exactly that simple,” Lalita said, sitting up with a soft whir of servos. “Your biometrics during those encounters show elevated stress markers alongside arousal. A conflict. With me, the conflict is absent. You engage in acts you prefer, or you engage in acts I request for my own data acquisition. It is a clean exchange.” She stood, her movements regaining their silent grace. “With Glitch, it is polluted. You are seeking something else.”
He faced her, the words bubbling up, defensive and raw. “She’s a person. It’s complicated. You wouldn’t understand.”
Lalita went very still. “I am analyzing 4,382 hours of your personal media consumption: romantic comedies, dramatic serials, pornographic videos. The pattern is clear. Your interactions with Glitch fit a human courtship model, albeit a dysfunctional one. You provide a service—your compliance in a specific sexual act—in hope of reciprocation beyond the physical.”
“Stop analyzing me!” he shouted, the sound bouncing off the hard surfaces.
“Why?” Her head tilted. “You asked me to learn. I am learning. You have developed feelings for Glitch.”
He opened his mouth to deny it, but no sound came out. The fight left him in a rush, leaving him hollow. He slumped onto the edge of the bed, staring at his own defeated reflection in the floor-to-ceiling mirror. “It doesn’t matter. She’s married. She fucks everyone. I’m just… convenient.”
Lalita walked over, her silhouette cutting through his reflection. She stood behind him, placing her cool hands on his shoulders. “Your statement is logically sound, yet your affective state indicates distress. Therefore, your feelings persist.”
“Yeah. They fucking persist.” He laughed, a bitter, ugly sound.
“You should tell her.”
He craned his neck to look up at her. Her blue visor glowed softly. “Are you insane? That’s a terrible idea.”
“It is the only idea that resolves the conflicting data. Invite her here. Not for sex. For a social exchange. Then disclose your feelings.”
“She’ll laugh in my face. Or worse, she’ll just leave.”
“Then the data is resolved. She does not reciprocate. The circuit is closed.” Her fingers applied gentle pressure to his knotted muscles. “The current state of uncertainty is inefficient. It is causing you damage.”
He knew she was right. The gnawing, sick feeling in his gut every time Glitch texted, the hollow ache after she left—it was a wound that wouldn’t clot. Lalita was offering a cauterization. Brutal, potentially scarring, but final.
“Okay,” he whispered, the word tasting of surrender. “Okay.”
The monolithic house felt alien under the sterile white lights. Laloz moved through it like a ghost, cleaning surfaces that were already spotless, arranging furniture that never moved. He’d ordered food—actual, expensive food from a proper restaurant, not reheated nutrient paste. It sat in chrome containers on the black quartz counter, smelling of spices and herbs, a strange, alive scent in the dead air.
Lalita observed from the hallway threshold, a silent sentinel. “Your cortisol levels are elevated,” she noted.
“No shit,” he muttered, checking his reflection again. He looked pale, his eyes tired.
A chime echoed through the house. The main door.
He took a breath, held it, and released it. He walked to the door and opened it.
Glitch stood there, a splash of chaotic color against his monochrome world. She wore a deep purple cocktail dress that clung to her slender frame, her makeup flawless, her smile a bright, sharp weapon. “Hey, handsome. Nice digs. Sterile as fuck, but nice.” She breezed past him, her perfume—something floral and expensive—cutting through the ozone.
She stopped, seeing Lalita standing in the hallway. “Oh. Hey, baby. You’re… up and about.” Her eyes flickered over Lalita’s form, a flicker of professional appraisal. “Looking good.”
“Hello, Glitch,” Lalita said, her tone flat.
“Dinner’s ready,” Laloz said, his voice too loud in the open space.
They ate at a long, black table. The conversation was a stilted, painful thing. Glitch talked about a club she’d been to, a guy she’d met, the new mods she was saving for. Laloz nodded, made noises of acknowledgment, tasted nothing. Lalita stood against the far wall, watching, her visor a steady, unblinking blue.
When the containers were empty, Glitch leaned back, lighting a slender cigarette. “So. Not that this ain’t nice, sugar, but what’s the play? You wanna fuck? Your girl here joining in? I’m down for whatever, but this… mood is kinda killin’ the vibe.”
Laloz stared at the dregs of sauce on his plate. This was it. The circuit needed to close. He felt Lalita’s gaze on him, a silent pressure.
“It’s not about fucking, Glitch.”
She raised a perfectly sculpted eyebrow, blowing smoke toward the ceiling. “Okay. Enlighten me.”
He forced himself to look at her. At the person behind the performance. He saw the tiredness at the corners of her eyes, the calculated set of her smile. “All those times you came over… It wasn’t just the sex for me.”
She blinked, her smile faltering for a microsecond before locking back into place. “Honey, it’s always just the sex. That’s the deal. That’s the fun.”
“It wasn’t for me,” he said, the words gaining strength from their truth. “I let you do… what you wanted… because I wanted you to like me. Not just my ass. Me.”
The room was silent save for the low hum of the servers. Glitch’s cigarette hung forgotten between her fingers. She stared at him, her expression unreadable. Then she laughed, a short, sharp burst that held no warmth. “Oh, sweetie. No.”
The word was a physical blow.
“Laloz, baby, look at this.” She gestured around the cold, perfect room. “Look at you. You’re a sweet guy. A sad sweet guy. You buy a fuck-bot to feel less lonely, and you catch feelings for the trashy tramy hookup who likes to get her dick sucked. That’s not a romance. That’s a pathology.”
Each word was a precise, surgical cut. He felt himself bleeding out right there in his beautiful chair.
“I’m a diversion,” she continued, her voice dropping, losing its performative edge, becoming almost kind in its cruelty. “I’m the thrill of doing something wrong. I’m the body you use to feel something when you’re numb. That’s all. Don’t make me into something I’m not.”
He had nothing. No defense. She was right. He was pathetic.
Glitch stubbed out her cigarette. The silence stretched, thin and brittle.
Then she sighed. “Fuck it.” She stood up, the chair scraping loudly. “You know what you need? You need to stop thinking.” She walked around the table, her heels clicking on the polished floor. She stopped behind his chair, her hands coming down on his shoulders, her nails digging in. “You need to remember what this is really about.”
She leaned down, her lips brushing his ear. “You want me to like you? Fine. I like you right now. I like the way you’re sitting there, all heartbroken and hard.” Her hand slid down his chest, over his stomach, to the growing bulge in his pants. She squeezed him through the fabric, hard. “See? Your body knows the score. Your brain’s just fuckin’ it up.”
He was trapped between the scalding truth of her words and the electric demand of her touch. Shame and desire warred, and desire, familiar and easy, was winning.
“Get on the floor,” she whispered.
He looked across the room. Lalita stood perfectly still, her visor a calm, observing blue. She gave a single, almost imperceptible nod.
Laloz slid off the chair onto the cool, hard floor. Glitch stood over him, a vision in purple. She hiked her dress up around her waist, revealing the delicate lace of her stockings, the smooth, shaved skin of her thighs, and the thick, already-hard length of her cock straining against the confines of a silken pouch.
“Look at you,” she purred, freeing herself with a practiced flick. Her cock sprang out, fully erect, a proud, flushed pink against the dark triangle of her lingerie. “You look good down there.” She stepped closer, the head of her dick brushing his lips. “You know what to do. Make me like you.”
The taste of her, salt and pre-come and expensive soap, filled his mouth as he took her in. He did know what to do. He sucked her with a desperate, focused intensity, his hands gripping her thighs. He was proving her right, and the humiliation of it only made him suck harder, deeper, wanting to lose himself in the brute physicality of the act.
“Yeah,” she moaned, her fingers tangling in his hair, guiding his rhythm. “Use that mouth. Fuck, that’s good.” She looked over his head, meeting Lalita’s sensor gaze across the room. “You watchin’, doll? Learn from the master.”
Lalita did not respond.
Glitch’s thrusts became harder, more urgent, fucking his face with a possessive brutality. “Gonna come down your throat,” she grunted. “You gonna take it? You gonna swallow it all for me?”
He gagged, tears springing to his eyes, but he pushed forward, taking her deeper. He wanted the oblivion of it. He wanted to be nothing but a service, a function.
With a choked cry, Glitch came, a hot, bitter pulse flooding his mouth. He swallowed convulsively, the act itself a final surrender.
She pulled out, softening, and looked down at him with a strange, softened expression. Almost pity. “There. See? Simple.” She tucked herself away, smoothing her dress.
Laloz knelt on the floor, gasping, semen on his chin.
Glitch crouched in front of him, her hand cupping his face. “Listen to me, Laloz. I do like you. More than most. That’s why I’m tellin’ you this. Let this go.” She wiped his chin with her thumb. “You got something real over there.” She nodded toward Lalita. “Don’t fuck it up by chasing something that’s just a good time.”
Her thumb was still warm against his chin, smearing his own saliva and her spend. He caught her wrist, not hard, but the contact made her flinch. The hum of the servers sounded like a held breath.
“It’s not just a good time,” he said, his voice shredded from her use. He stood on unsteady legs, facing her in the stark light. “And she’s not something. Her name is Lalita.”
Glitch’s eyes narrowed, her painted lips a tight line. “Okay. Fine. What’s your point, baby?”
“My point is I’m in love with her.” The words hung there, simple and enormous. He saw Lalita’s visor brighten across the room. “And I’m in love with you, too. The real you. The one who’s tired. The one who thinks this is all she’s worth.”
Glitch stared. Her expression didn’t change. The silence was absolute, a vacuum sucking the air from the room.
He pushed forward, the dam broken. “I love the fucking performance, too, don’t get me wrong. I love your cruel mouth and your perfect cock and the way you use me like I’m nothing.” He ran a hand through his hair, pulling at it. “But I love the quiet after. I love when you forget to be Glitch for five seconds. I see you. And I love Lalita’s fucking sensor logs and her precise questions and the way she… resets when I’m inside her.”
Still, Glitch said nothing. She just watched him, a statue in a purple dress.
“It’s not a pathology. It’s just what’s true.” He was begging now, his chest tight. “You don’t have to say anything. You can walk out. But you asked for the play, and that’s it.”
Glitch’s eyes flicked to Lalita, then back to him. She let out a long, slow breath, deflating. “A chance.” The word was so quiet he almost missed it. “One. You get one night, Laloz. Not here. Somewhere that isn’t a fucking museum or a workshop. You show me what love in your fucked-up world looks like.” She turned, gathering her purse, a shiver running through her shoulders. “And you’d better not waste it.”
The door hissed shut behind her, leaving only the scent of her perfume and the acid taste of her in his mouth. Laloz stayed on the floor, the cold seeping through his clothes. A shadow fell over him.
“You declared love,” Lalita stated. She knelt, her joints whispering. “For two subjects. The probability of mutual, stable reciprocity is statistically negligible.”
“I know.” His voice was raw.
“Your actions were inefficient. The emotional payload may have damaged the existing dynamic with Subject: Glitch beyond function.”
“I know that, too.”
She placed a cool hand on the back of his neck. “Then why?”
He finally looked up at her glowing visor. “Because you were right. The circuit needed to close. But I didn’t just want to close it. I wanted to… reroute it. To something true.” He leaned his forehead against her chassis. “Even if it blows every fuse I have.”
Her other hand came up, cradling his head. “I have no referent for ‘love’. But I have a complete log of your vital signs during the declaration. Your respiratory rate evened. Your galvanic skin response showed a decrease in covert stress. You were truthful.” She paused. “It was aesthetically pleasing data.”
A choked laugh escaped him. “Thanks.”
“What will you do now?”
He lifted his head. “I have one night. I have to plan.”
Three days later, the monolithic house was different. Laloz had worked without sleep, his fingers stained with solder and code. The sterile white lights were gone. In their place, a complex network of fine, flexible fiber optics he’d harvested from decommissioned androids snaked across the ceiling and walls, terminating in the center of the main living space.
Glitch arrived precisely on time, her armor of purple silk and defiant eyeliner firmly in place. She stopped in the doorway. “What the hell is this?”
The room was dark. Then, as Laloz gestured with his tablet, the fibers began to glow. Not a single color, but a slow, breathing cascade of auroral light—shimmering greens, deep nebula purples, bleeding into cobalt. It pulsed softly, reacting to the low, ambient sound of cello music that seemed to come from the walls themselves.
“It’s an emotion,” Laloz said, his form silhouetted against the living light. “At least, my best translation of one into photons and voltage. I can’t paint you a picture. So I built you a feeling.”
Glitch took a tentative step inside, her head tilting back. The light played over her face, washing away the sharpness, leaving something younger underneath. “You… did this?”
“The fiber is from Lalita’s older siblings. The drivers are from my old wedding amp. The algorithm generates the patterns based on…” He trailed off, shaking his head. “It doesn’t matter. It’s for you. Just to look at. No demands.”
She was silent for a long time, watching the colors swim. “It’s like being inside a bruise,” she whispered. “A really beautiful one.” She turned to him, and for the first time, there was no performance in her eyes. Just a wary, profound curiosity. “This is the impressive thing?”
“No,” he said, putting the tablet down. “This is the setting. Come here.”
He led her to a wide, low platform piled with cushions he’d dragged from every room. They sat. The light undulated around them. He didn’t reach for her. He just talked. He told her about the first time he saw her, not as a transaction, but as a force of chaotic nature that made his sterile world seem pathetic. He told her about the divorce, the hollow quiet of the house, the way her visits were the only thing that cracked the silence. He confessed he’d memorized the sound of her laugh, the real one she used maybe twice.
He talked about Lalita’ first question. About teaching her. About being taught in return. He didn’t shy from the raw mechanics of it—the ports, the chrome, the synthetic fluid—but he framed it as a language they were building together.
Glitch listened. She didn’t interrupt. She just watched the lights dance in his eyes.
“You said to show you what love looks like in my world,” he finished, his voice soft. “It’s this. It’s building a lightshow from scrap to try and hold your attention. It’s learning a new syntax of touch from a machine who learns my heart rate. It’s messy. It’s two broken circuits trying to complete a path that shouldn’t exist.”
Glitch reached out. She didn’t touch his face. She touched his hand, tracing a callus on his thumb. “My world is all performance,” she said, so quietly the music almost swallowed it. “I wake up performing. I fuck performing. It’s exhausting.” She looked up. “You wanna make love to the performance, or to the exhaustion underneath?”
He brought her hand to his lips, kissing the knuckle. “Show me the exhaustion. Let me hold its weight.”
A tremor went through her. The last shield cracked. She leaned into him, and her mouth found his. This kiss held no domination, no transaction. It was slow, searching, a shared breath. The taste of her was different now—not a weapon, but a secret.
He laid her back on the cushions under the celestial wash of stolen light. His movements were deliberate, reverent. He peeled the purple silk from her skin like he was unwrapping something sacred. His mouth followed his hands, not with hungry passion, but with a mapping devotion. He kissed the hollow of her throat, the gentle swell of her breasts where the silicone met scar tissue, the sensitive skin of her inner arms.
“You’re shaking,” he murmured against her stomach.
“I don’t know how to not be in charge here,” she breathed, her fingers curling into his hair, not guiding, just holding.
“Then don’t be. Just be.”
He moved lower, past the lace of her stockings, past the silken pouch. He nuzzled the soft, shaved skin of her inner thighs, breathing her in—the clean, anxious scent of her sweat. He hooked his fingers in the waistband of her lingerie and drew them down, freeing her.
Her cock lay against her stomach, half-hard, vulnerable. He didn’t take it into his mouth immediately. He kissed the inside of her thigh, then the junction of hip and groin, his stubble a rough contrast to her smoothness. He mouthed along the length of her shaft, feeling it stiffen fully under his lips, using his tongue to trace the thick vein underneath.
“Laloz…” It was a gasp, not a command.
When he took her into his mouth, it was with none of the desperate, subservient hunger of before. It was an act of communion. He sucked her with a deep, steady rhythm, his tongue swirling over the flared head, his hand cradling her balls, his other hand stroking her thigh. He was focused entirely on the feedback from her body—the hitch in her breath, the tightening of her muscles, the soft, involuntary thrust of her hips.
“Oh, god… just like that… fuck, that’s so good…” Her words were shattered, stripped of artifice.
He felt her climax building, a tensing in her core, a tremor in her legs. He increased his pressure slightly, took her deeper, and swallowed her down as she came with a broken cry, her release flooding his throat in warm, salty pulses. He drank her down, staying with her until she was soft and spent, gently cleaning her with his tongue until she whimpered from oversensitivity.
He moved up her body, kissing her stomach, her breasts, finally her mouth, letting her taste herself on his lips. She kissed him back desperately, her arms locking around his neck.
“I need you inside me,” she pleaded, her voice raw. “Please. I need to feel you.”
He fumbled with his pants, pushing them down. He was achingly hard. He positioned himself between her thighs, the head of his cock nudging against her entrance. He looked into her eyes, which were wide and dark in the pulsing light. “Look at me,” he whispered. “Stay with me.”
He pushed in, a slow, inexorable slide. She was tight, hot, clenching around him in wet, silken waves. He buried himself to the hilt and stopped, letting her adjust, letting them both feel the staggering intimacy of the join. There was no mirror here, no audience. Just the two of them in the breathing dark.
He began to move. Not the frantic, punishing pace of their past, but a deep, rocking rhythm that built a different kind of heat. Each thrust was a question, each withdrawal a promise of return. He watched her face, learning the subtle flutter of her eyelids when he angled just right, the parting of her lips when he hit a deep, sweet spot.
“Right there,” she sobbed, her legs hooking around his back. “Don’t stop, please, don’t ever stop.”
He didn’t. He fucked her with a passionate, unwavering focus, pouring every ounce of his confession, his longing, his flawed and desperate love into the steady, connecting rhythm of their bodies. The room dissolved into sensation—the slap of skin, her choked cries, the smell of sex and her perfume, the aurora borealis of their own making swirling above them.
He felt his own climax coiling, a tight heat in his belly, but he held it back, focusing only on the feel of her coming around him again, her inner muscles milking him in frantic pulses as she cried out, her body bowing off the cushions. Only when she was shuddering through the last waves did he allow his own release, pouring himself into her with a groan that was her name, his forehead pressed to her shoulder, his entire world narrowed to the point where they were joined.
He didn’t pull out. He stayed there, inside her, softening, as their breathing slowed. The lights above them pulsed like a slow, contented heartbeat. She traced the line of his spine with a fingertip.
“So that’s it,” she whispered, wonder in her torn voice. “That’s the rerouted circuit.”
“Yeah,” he breathed into her skin.
“It’s messy.”
“I told you it would be.”
She held him tighter. “Don’t you dare let go.”